The Colorless Sky
by Nylah
Summary: Trapped in a collapsed tunnel, buried under tons of rock and with little hope of survival, there is really not much else to do but talk and look back on how he ended up there. In the end, only a desperate act may save him... but at what cost?
1. Prologue

**Story warning: Angst, blood and gore, character death and general darkness, some language. Rated for a REASON.  
**

Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom.

* * *

**Prologue**

* * *

The ever growing darkness was approaching us as we took our last stand. We were tired and grim, clothes torn and bloody – or, in my case, ectoplasm stained – and we knew we couldn't last. Not here, not now. Sam clutched her ecto gun tightly as she stared in the distance, past the ruins of the buildings, into the remains of the forest that had once surrounded Amity Park. Her pale face and the dark circles under her eyes had me worried, but there was nothing I could do about it.

Jazz was next to me, absentmindedly toying with the switch of her Specter Deflector, until I frowned at her. She needed to leave it on, even if it meant that the battery would be drained within the hour. We wouldn't last an hour anyway. Blushing slightly, she willed her hand away from the switch after setting it into the 'on' position again. I felt it's field uncomfortably close, stinging my skin. Both girls had a soft, greenish glow around them only I could see. I couldn't touch them, not if I didn't want to be shocked badly. But I felt like hugging them, if only to feel them for the last time.

"Here they come," Sam said hoarsely.

I tore my eyes away from her – when had I started staring at her? - and looked into the direction she was pointing. The blackened hills were still there, but now there was a distinct movement to be seen, a glowing green, coming from just behind the crest of the nearest hill.

"Here they come," I confirmed, feeling my ghostly body go even colder, a constant blue mist coming from deep within me.


	2. Still Here

* * *

**Chapter 1: Still Here**

* * *

I awoke with a start. For a moment I was disoriented, then I moved and I felt the cold rock scrape against my back through my thin shirt, always stinging as it was still tearing and draining my now almost nonexistent ghost powers. Slowly, I moved my hands, then my feet, and small stones and dirt shifted in my attempt to get more comfortable. I had gotten used to sleeping on the ground, had gotten used to the cold, but I never got comfortable. Still, I didn't open my eyes. If I kept them closed, I could pretend to be somewhere else, somewhere not as hopeless, somewhere where not everybody around me was dying or already dead. I should have stayed still.

I heard the whip whir before it hit me, but I was too slow to move, still sluggish from my restless sleep. I did manage to get my arm up and hissed in pain as it hit there. I opened my eyes and looked a the guard, careful to keep my face expressionless. He looked at me, holding the whip, waiting for me to do something, say something or even look wrong. He was a heavy set man in his forties, wearing dark leather pants and a comfortable looking coat that no doubt kept him warm. Heavy eyebrows, dark eyes, dark brown hair. Deke, his name was. I didn't hate him. He wasn't the worst of them, and he was only looking after himself. Like the rest of us here.

I did nothing. Finally, he grunted a 'Get up, boy' at me and moved away. I started breathing again.

Slowly, but not so slowly that Deke would come back and hit me some more, I got up on my feet. The usual hunger gnawed at my stomach and it was raining slightly, making everything gleaming and slippery. The drizzle soaked everything and out of nowhere other gray figures around me started moving in slow motion, as if the earth around me suddenly came to life, making the quarry we were in almost seem surreal. Water came down the slope and started to come together in little puddles before it slowly sank into the rubble on the bottom of the quarry.

I picked up my pickax, which I had been laying practically on top of and which I had been guarding closely, and started hacking at a particularly big rock, trying to loosen it so that it could be moved out of the way. For a moment, my eyes strayed to the figure laying on the ground about ten feet away from me. He had suddenly fallen down the day before yesterday – or maybe it was the day before that, I couldn't be sure – and hadn't moved since. I hadn't checked on him yet. There was no point. He was dead, even if he wasn't.

Somebody had already taken his shoes. Somebody else had nicked his shovel. I had been too late to grab anything. His clothes were worse than mine, so they were useless. In fact, the whole guy was useless. I wished they'd come and take him away, but they did that only once a week. Tomorrow, I thought, maybe tomorrow. The thought didn't make me feel better. Tomorrow was only a vague concept. The future. I had no future. Nor did I have a past. Well, I did have one, but I had pushed if so far away that I hardly remembered it.

The pickax hung down uselessly in my hands. My fingers loosened. I had counted the days at first, in a desperate attempt to hold on to what I knew, to keep track of my life. But days had turned into weeks had turned into months had turned into... years? I didn't know anymore. I was lost in the here and now.

There was no warning. Somehow, I had managed to let my mind drift again, away from my job at the bottom of the huge quarry. I hit the ground before the pain really registered, and only when I heard cruel laughter I realized a guard had hit me again. Before I could get up, I felt a large hand grab me by the neck and pull me up. Only then I felt the burning in my back and the slight trickle of what could only be blood.

"No slacking," the guard growled, his mouth close to my ear.

I didn't close my eyes, didn't whimper, didn't say anything but just nodded. I had long ago learned that keeping quiet was the best tactic for survival, although I wasn't sure anymore what I was living for. There was no hope down here. Up there, out of the quarry, there was nothing left. My town was destroyed, the people either chased away or killed, or put down here in the quarry which amounted to the same thing.

There was nothing left to live for. And yet I hung on.

The guard let go and I stumbled forward. I caught myself before I could fall down and invite a kick in the ribs and quickly picked up the pickax again. There was no point in what I was doing. I couldn't see why we were digging. There was only one thing I really knew, and that was to keep digging. Because if I stopped, it'd be the end of me.

My pickax came down again, and I felt the force of the blow in my thin arms. Then, to my horror, I staggered. Quickly I looked around to see if one of the guards, or worse, one of my fellow diggers had noticed. The guards would mostly leave me alone, but they would keep an eye on me if they thought I was going to collapse. The other people digging, however, would try to take everything away from me even before I died. I knew. I had done the same thing. This was no place for the weak or the kind hearted. Those were the first to go. Like Jake.

As always when I thought of him, which wasn't often, I felt slightly sick. Jake had taken care of me in the beginning, when I still thought I could escape, when I had cried and screamed because of the pain the black rock caused me, when I had despaired over my fading powers. He had told me to suck it up and be quiet, had told me to be tough and take care of myself first, to not interfere with others and never, ever, try to stand up against the guards. He had taught me well. Too bad he hadn't taken his own advice.

I had been slow. And when the guard had started whipping me, I had started to scream. I shouldn't have. If I had stayed quiet, the guard might have stopped in time. Instead, I had cried out in pain and shock. I should have died right then and there. Instead, my foolish friend had stepped in and had yanked the whip out of the man's hands. And with that, he sealed his fate. I had watched as they beat him to death, watched the blood stain his blond hair and his huge blond mustache, the mustache he had been so proud of, watched as the light in his eyes went out.

I never moved. And I never spoke another word. That was over a year ago.

Nobody seemed to have noticed my slight swaying. I looked at the entrance of the quarry, a narrow dirt road right next to the cliff, hoping to see the food being brought in, but it was too early. Still, it would be a good idea to shuffle closer, to try and get into position. There was never enough. Get there first or get nothing at all. I wasn't the only one doing that of course, the trick was to get close but still keep a prudent distance. If we got too close, the guards lashed out with their whips. And that was to be avoided at all times. When I thought about that, I remembered I had managed to get myself whipped twice already today. Not a good sign. In fact, the first sign that I was losing.

I pushed that thought away and hacked my pickax with a little bit more force, causing a rock to suddenly come loose and roll down the slight slope I was on. I looked after it. It rolled down all the way to the entrance of one of the many tunnels that led into the steep rock on the other side. There were people digging in there too. I never saw them. I just saw the wheelbarrows coming out, carrying the rubble and rocks they had managed to dig up.

A slight tremor in the earth had us all frozen on the spot. A quiet settled down over the quarry. Even the guards were standing perfectly still. I shivered. Earthquakes were not uncommon here. Sometimes they were just tremors, like now, sometimes they caused landslides, burying people, prisoners and guards alike. To the earth, we were all equals.

When nothing more happened, the guards started screaming and whipping, and I quickly resumed my work, trying to ignore the growling pit in my stomach. I looked up at the strangely colored sky to try and judge the time, but the part that would have allowed me to do that was heavily overcast. The dark clouds hung ominously low and I thought I could see lightning. The part of the sky that was swirling green never told me anything.

Again a tremor. Again we stopped. At the top of the slope I was standing on, some small stones came loose and rolled down the slope. We stared after them as they bounced and jumped, but nothing else happened. I looked around, but the earth remained quiet once more. I had a bad feeling.

Just as I was about to start my work again, the ground shook, more forcefully than before. I staggered and went down on my hands and knees. A helpless shout above me made me look up, and I jumped aside just in time. The guy that had been working at the top of the slope came crashing down, brushed past my arm and hit the ground below me with a sickening thud. I looked at him laying there and flinched when I saw his legs were still twitching. Then I looked at his shoes, but they were in a worse shape than mine. After a few moments, he laid still. One of the gray figures who, as I could clearly see, wasn't wearing any shoes at all rushed forward and started pulling them off his feet. The guards watched and laughed.

Sometimes I wondered about the guards. Not why they were doing it, I knew why. The guards were prisoners too, only with a slightly higher status. Which meant better and more food, better clothing and little chance of being robbed off your clothes and tools as you laid dying on the ground. Funny, even down here in this quarry, people were trying to get ahead. I wondered what Dash or Paulina would think of it.

There were no ghost guards. There must be some outside the quarry, because they were ultimately the reason we were all in here, but never inside. And with good reason. The black rock we were digging in absorbed ectoplasm. I had seen it happen countless times, because sometimes they threw a ghost that had somehow displeased them into the quarry and it was an unnerving sight, seeing them trying to keep themselves together, going more and more transparent until they just let go of themselves and disappeared in a green mist. Ember had been one of them, as had the Box Ghost. I was sure that was what would happen to me should I try to go ghost. I could still feel my ghost form deep inside me, but the once easily reached cold core was now no more than a quickly melting little ice cube.

On the bright side, I no longer felt like I was being eaten alive every time I touched that black rock. It still stung my hands whenever I touched it, which was nearly all the time, but I no longer had the feeling I was being sucked dry. If only because there was nothing left.

Suddenly the earth really started to shake and the people around me started screaming and running. I did the same as it seemed to be the only logical thing to do, except for the screaming, but instead of running away from the cliff as the others were, I ran into one of the tunnels, hoping to avoid the falling rock that way. It was of course the biggest mistake I ever made, because as soon as I had done that the entrance of the tunnel collapsed and I had to run further into the tunnel to avoid being hit. It was these times that I missed my ghost powers the most. Going intangible would have greatly improved my chances of survival. Of course, if I had still had my ghost powers, I wouldn't have been down there in the first place.

A cloud of dust swept over me and I started coughing, my eyes tearing. I couldn't see a thing anymore, save for the flickering light in the distance from torches that were still burning. The ground was swaying under my feet, or maybe it was me that was swaying. Then I got hit by something massive and I went down.


	3. Darkness

* * *

**Chapter 2: Darkness**

* * *

I opened my eyes and for a moment thought I had gone blind. The darkness around me was complete, I couldn't see a thing. Strangely enough I knew where I was immediately. I couldn't have been unconscious for long because the dust was still hanging thickly in the air. I tried to move but found that something big and heavy was pinning me down on the ground. Some big rock had fallen on me and was crushing my hip. It hurt like hell. I decided to lay very still.

A scraping sound came from my left and I foolishly turned my head in that direction. Foolish because A) It was totally dark and I couldn't see a thing anyway and B) it caused a sharp pain in my head that made me nauseous and sent my head spinning.

"Who's there?"

The voice of a man came from the direction I had heard the sound. When my head stopped spinning somewhat I opened my mouth to answer, but instead started coughing, which drew my attention to the fact that my ribs were probably broken. When I managed to stop coughing the pain subsided somewhat. I felt something wet on my cheek and realized that I was crying, which amazed me because I hadn't cried in a long, long time.

Someone was moving around, muttering to himself. I listened to him for a while as he was pushing rubble around until he moved away altogether. I was alone again. After what seemed like ages I saw a soft, yellow glow coming from the direction the unknown person had gone. He came climbing towards me over the rubble and I could see his outline in the light of the torch he was holding. He came closer and held the torch higher, to take a look at me.

"You're just a kid!"

I scowled at him for that. I wasn't a kid anymore, or at least, I didn't think I was. I had to be at least seventeen or eighteen now, depending on how long I had been there. Two years, I thought, at least two years. One of which without talking, without making a sound. No wonder I was having trouble with it now.

I studied the man before me. He was big, almost as big as Jake had been. He had long, gray hair and a gray beard. Or they would have been gray but for the black dust that was in it. It was also on his face and I suppose I must look about the same. He had brown eyes that sparkled in the light of the torch. He put it down on the ground and it continued burning, the light of the flames dancing on the ceiling. We were in a small clearing, all around us there were fallen rocks and debris. I realized I had been very lucky, if you can call being buried in a cave with no chance to get out lucky. The cave itself looked like something out of a ride in an amusement park, unreal.

"Here, let me help you," he said.

He moved next to me and lifted the big rock from my body. I hissed in pain but once it was gone the pain subsided somewhat. Maybe my hip wasn't broken. The man sat down next to me and I looked up at him as he shifted somewhat to make himself comfortable.

"I'm George," he said, "What's your name?"

"Danny," I rasped.

My voice sounded strange, like it wasn't my voice at all. It was definitely much lower than I remembered.

"Alright, Danny," George said, "Where are you hurt?"

I closed my eyes. Couldn't he see that? I decided I didn't need to answer him, in fact I felt very tired all of a sudden. A nap was what I needed.

"Hey Danny! Stay awake kid!"

George prodded me in the ribs and I yelped in pain. I opened my eyes and glared at him.

"You probably have a concussion," he said, "So you need to stay awake, or you may never wake up."

"So?" I said hoarsely. My voice still sounded strange. "What's the point? It's not like they're going to dig us out."

I noticed I slurred my words somewhat. Maybe he was right about the concussion. As if emphasizing my point the earth started to shake again and several pieces of the ceiling came down, along with a cloud of dust. I started coughing again and the pain of my broken ribs seared through me. I couldn't stop and for a while the world was a flurry of swirling colors. Quite pretty, actually.

I vaguely heard someone call out my name, but I ignored him. I was too busy being in agony and I wished he would stop shouting at me and leave me be so I could look at the pretty colors. But he wouldn't leave me alone and finally I opened my eyes to find out what he wanted. He looked relieved.

"Good. You're still with us," he said.

I started a sigh, but stopped myself in time. Better to breathe shallow for a while.

"What do you want?" I asked him somewhat rudely.

I didn't mean to be rude, it was just that I hadn't talked to anyone for so long. He didn't seem to mind though. He shrugged.

"I don't know. Stay alive. Go home to my family. Sit in the sun. Eat lobster."

I laughed and my chest exploded. I laid there for a while, gasping for air, my eyes tearing. His voice seemed to come from afar.

"I'm sorry. Didn't mean to hurt you."

I shook my head, feeling light headed. I wanted to laugh again but managed to suppress it. I felt strangely light hearted. Laughing was nice, even if it hurt.

"Can you help me sit up?" I asked him.

He looked at me doubtfully but helped me anyway. A little while later I was sitting with my back against the rocky wall and found that breathing was a little easier that way. My hip obviously wasn't broken and my legs seemed to be OK.

"Thanks," I said to him, feeling really grateful. "I don't suppose there is any water in this God forsaken cave?"

He grinned. "Actually there is. There should be a barrel at the end of the tunnel. Very convenient. That way we can keep on working while drinking and won't have to come all the way out." He got up. "I'll be right back," he said, "But I need to take the torch. Will you be alright in the dark?"

The thought terrified me and he must have seen it in my eyes. I closed them.

"I'll be fine."

He looked at me one more time and then walked away, taking the light with him and I noticed he was limping. He was away for what seemed like ages and I started to feel claustrophobic in there. I moved my hand before my face but I couldn't see it at all and my breathing quickened, coming in short gasps. I felt a desperate need to at least see the walls of the cave. Finally I closed my eyes and pretended it was really light, I just had my eyes closed so I couldn't see it.

I awoke when he said my name, gently shaking me by the shoulder. Without a word I took the bowl from him and sipped the water. Of course it tasted foul but to me it felt like heaven. I looked at George again and he smiled at me.

"You haven't been here long," I said to him.

He didn't have that hopeless, uncaring attitude yet that overtook all of us once we survived the first few months. To survive, you needed to be able to take what you needed by force if necessary, even from your fellow prisoners. It was a great way to keep us divided. You're not going to plot to escape with the person who stole your bread from you. He sighed.

"Four months, two days and... well I don't know what time it is. How... how long have you been here?"

"I don't know. What year is it?"

He stared at me. "What _year_ is it? You mean you've been here for years?"

I shrugged and regretted it instantly. "At least two," I said.

"I didn't know they put kids in here... The year is 2009. March 15, 2009."

I was silent at that for a while. Eighteen. I was eighteen. Incredible. I thought about all the things I should have been doing right now. Graduating, going to college maybe, although with my grades it wouldn't have been a good one. Maybe I would have asked Sam out by now.

"Three years then. I've been here three years."

He looked at me sadly and didn't ask how I had survived that long. I think he knew.

"Where are you from?" I asked him.

I wanted to change the subject and the best way to do that is to get him to talk about himself. It always worked with Jake. After all the time he had looked after me I had never told him anything about myself save my name, and not even my last name.

"Amity Park."

I almost shot up straight. He saw my reaction to that and smiled.

"And so are you huh. Want me to tell you about it?"

I nodded, relieved that he offered to talk instead of ask me questions that I couldn't answer anyway.

"About two years ago we managed to drive the ghosts out of town. There is a ghost-human shield around the whole town now. We are relatively safe there, but we are under siege. Every once in a while we have to go out for supplies, food, equipment. The town can't support itself, we have problems keeping the ghost shield up. But we're alive."

I felt something I hadn't felt in a long time: hope. Not for me - never for me, I was lost -, but for... humanity? Not everybody was dead. Some survived, were fighting, were living. Maybe even some of my friends or family survived. My parents...

"You have family there?" he asked me.

I couldn't speak for a moment because of the lump in my throat. "Yes," I said hoarsely.

I didn't say anything more and he looked at me oddly, obviously expecting me to expand on that. I tried to distract him.

"Do you?"

He smiled happily. "I have a wife and two daughters. They're fourteen and twelve. We used to live in the suburbs but those aren't under the ghost shield so we fled into town and now we're in an old apartment building, close to Fenton Works actually, do you know it?"

I nodded, surprised at him mentioning it. But it would stand to reason that that was were the ghost shield originated from. He continued.

"After Mr Fenton was killed, Mrs Fenton took charge of the resistance and that's how we managed to drive the ghosts out. And then Mr Gray modified their ghost shield so it could be expanded to include the whole town, just like before when Pariah Dark invaded the town."

My world shattered. Dad was...dead? He died? The hope I had felt only moments before evaporated. For a very short moment I had thought it possible at least my parents were alive. I hadn't seen them die, like Jazz and Sam. All those years I had known, rationally, that they had to be dead, that there had been no way for them to live, the way they had been fighting the ghost invasion. But I didn't actually _know_. And now I did.

"What's the matter?"

His voice sounded sharp. I didn't want to hear anymore and turned my head away, not wanting to cry, trying to keep my face as impassive as I could. I've had a lot of practice in that over the years, but I didn't trust myself to look at him. I thought about my father in his orange jump suit, always blathering about ghosts, embarrassing me at school. I remembered fishing at Lake Eerie and then he saved me from that lake monster. I thought about a million other things that I hadn't wanted to think about the last three years. Finally I turned back to him and he looked at me worriedly.

"So... what did you do before the attack," I asked him, forcing the memories back to where they belonged.

He hesitated, seemingly unsure about my sudden change of subject, but he went along with it for a while, talking about his former job (he worked in a bank), his wife, his children, his house, his family. He talked about the war against the ghosts, the life the people now led behind the ghost shield, the difficulties they were having. He talked for a long time and I listened to him so I wouldn't have to think for myself. At last he stopped talking and suggested that he'd go and get some more water. He left with the torch, leaving me in the dark again and this time it was almost comforting.

When he returned, he not only brought water but also two spare torches.

"Aren't they going to use up the oxygen?" I asked him.

He shrugged. "I don't think so. This tunnel is quite long. There'll be plenty of oxygen for the torches and us."

He sat down and handed me my bowl.

"Now. Tell me about you."

I looked at him and said nothing.

"Come on, all we do is talk about me and I'm done talking."

"I'm tired."

"That's crap. What's so bad that you don't want to talk about it? It's not going to matter anymore now. We're dead and you know it. Might as well pass the time while getting there."

I thought about that. Maybe I did want to tell him. I took another sip from my bowl and stared into the flame of the torch that George had stuck between some rocks. But where to begin?


	4. Headaches

* * *

**Chapter 3: Headaches**

* * *

I woke up that morning with a splitting headache, which was worsened by the blaring of the alarm clock beside my bed. I considered blasting it but that would have been a little hard to explain to my parents, so I opted for hitting it with my pillow instead. It fell to the floor and continued blaring. Bummer.

The door opened and Jazz walked in. She picked up the alarm clock and silenced it while looking at me critically.

"You were home really late last night," she said.

I rolled on my back and squinted at her.

"I thought I told you not to wait up for me," I said.

She sighed and bend over to examine me more closely. I pulled up the covers to my chin but she had already spotted the lump on the side of my head.

"Did you put some ice on that?"

I pointed at the now warm ice pack beside the bed and she nodded.

"How's the head?" she asked.

"I'm fine."

"Liar. Get up. I'll give you a ride."

She left and I smiled. I would die before I admitted it, but I really loved my overbearing, bossy, inquisitive and what have you sister. So I did get up and took a quick shower, letting cold water run over my head for a while. It seemed to help.

So she drove me to school and I didn't have walk to the bus stop in the rain or ride the over crowded bus. I yelled a 'thanks, sis' to her when I exited the car and ran to the door, holding my backpack over my head. Or course Dash Baxter chose that exact moment to arrive in the car park and I failed to see him. I saw him grinning behind the wheel when he left me soaked just a few yards from the door. So much for getting to school dry.

I went to my locker and met Sam and Tucker there. They looked at me quizzically when they saw, and heard, me walking to them, squelching in my shoes.

"You know," Tucker said to me conversationally, "The great thing about being a ghost is that you can go intangible."

I scowled at him. "Dash did this. He knows I'm soaked. It would be a little bit strange if I show up in class all dry."

Mr Lancer raised his eyebrows at my wet state and I managed not to scowl at him too. Then Dash came in and started to snicker when he saw me. I ignored him. After roll call Mr Lancer asked for our assignments and I was happy, because for once I had actually done it. I started rummaging through my bag and then I remembered. I always pack my bag the night before, because in the morning my brain doesn't function too well. Some people would argue my brain never functions well, but that wasn't the point right then. The point was, I was interrupted by Skulker when I was doing just that and I had left my homework on my desk. And after the near concussion he had given me before I could capture him I just crashed on my bed, after getting the ice pack out of the freezer of course.

"Um, Mr Lancer," I began, but he interrupted me.

"I hadn't expected it anyway, Mr Fenton. That's an F for you."

I started protesting, trying to explain, but he wouldn't listen. In fact when I started to get angry he gave me a detention on top of it. I was quiet after that and sat silently fuming at my desk during the lecture. I could feel Sam and Tucker's sympathetic gazes on me, but I ignored them. I had a headache, I was wet, I got an F on the paper that I did do for once and I got detention. And that all within an hour of waking up. This was going to be a long day.

My friends of course tried to cheer me up and finally managed to get a laugh out of me at lunch time.

"Seriously dude," Tucker said, "You shouldn't let the weather get you down like that. Or is it you that's causing this weather?"

He was of course referring to my little misunderstanding with Vortex a few weeks earlier. My emotions had been tied to the weather and I had a great time annoying the hell out of Vlad. We had some sort of truce after that, I left him alone and he left me alone. I shook my head and winced.

"Sorry. It's just that Skulker slammed me into a building last night and I have a headache."

I looked around the noisy cafeteria, it's windows steaming and crammed with people because nobody was sitting outside today. Then I looked at my tray with the unappetizing lump that was posing as meat, the soggy fries and something that could have been apple sauce once. I pushed it away. Tucker's eyes started gleaming and I nodded. Sam looked disgusted.

"I'm going outside for I while," I declared, getting up, "I really need some fresh air."

"You'll get soaked all over again," Sam warned me.

I shrugged. "I'll go intangible after. I don't have any more classes with Dash today."

So I stood outside the cafeteria for a while, letting the rain that was really pouring down soak me. It was cold too, but cold didn't bother me as much as it used to. I walked to the picknic tables and sat on top of one, resting my feet on the bench. The cold water dripped from my hair into my eyes, blurring my vision. At least there was fresh air here and my headache subsided.

I sighed when the bell sounded and went inside, going intangible briefly to get the water off. I was relatively comfortable during the rest of the day, and when I got out of my detention the bus had of course already left and the parking lot was empty. And it was still raining.

Deciding that I had had enough for the day I carefully checked my surroundings, before I reached inside me for that familiar cold feeling that was my ghost form. I felt the two rings form around my waist, one traveling upwards, the other down, changing me into a ghost in black spandex with white hair and glowing green eyes.

I picked up my backpack and took to the air, picking up speed quickly and letting the wind blow through my hair. I always felt great flying and it lifted my spirits enormously.

"Seems my bad luck has ended for today," I muttered to myself and of course I should have known better than to say that.

The moment my ghost sense went off I got blasted in the back with a pink ecto beam, which of course meant Vlad wanted to talk to me. I turned around quickly, my hands already glowing green and sure enough there he was, looking at me smugly.

"Daniel, my dear boy," he said, "It's so hard to get your attention these days. I think I shall pass out a new law that all teenagers should have their ears examined. I called you twice."

I scowled at him, rubbing my back. But I was curious too, it had been a while since we last 'talked' and you couldn't really call that talking. If I recall correctly, it had been about my opinion of him being a fruitloop.

"What do you want, Vlad," I asked.

He tsk'ed and shook his head. OK so I passed the stage where I was polite to him long ago. Then suddenly he was right in front of me and grabbed me by my suit, pulling me close. I squeaked and struggled, but he was still stronger than me.

"To ask you one last time, Daniel, and I beg you to think it over very carefully this time."

I knew what was coming and pulled out my most bored look. Why was he even bothering again?

"Join me. We can rule the world together. Together we are unbeatable, we are the most powerful beings in the world. We may not be related through blood ties, but we are related by something even stronger than that: fate! You should be MY son!"

I stopped struggling and took a good look at him. There was something different about him, but I couldn't figure out what it was. Something in his eyes.

"Vlad," I said, "I know I'm not the brightest bulb in the box, but why can't you get it through your thick head that I. Will. Never. Join. You!"

To my surprise he let me go and floated back somewhat, looking... sad.

"Think it over," he said, and if I didn't know any better I would think it sounded almost pleadingly, "I would really be disconcerted if I had to destroy you."

Then, to emphasize his point, he blasted me with a massive pink ecto ray and I plummeted to the ground, hitting my head again before I could go intangible. For a moment, stars danced before my eyes and I expected to be hit again but it never came. When I looked up, he was gone.

I looked around groggily, but I was alone in the street, the rain still pouring down. I wiped my white hair out of my eyes, grabbed my backpack and shakily flew up into the air again and went home. I transformed to 'Fenton' around the corner of my house and ran to the door. As I slammed it behind me my sister poked her head around the kitchen door.

She looked at my pained face and said, "Still a headache?"

"No," I grumbled, "Again."

"What happened?"

My sister can be a pain in the ass, but she's great to talk to about confusing things. I checked to see if my parents were around, but they seemed to be in the lab, no doubt working on another invention to make my life even more difficult. I followed her to the kitchen and told her about my encounter with Vlad.

"I have a strange feeling about this," I said, "Something's not right. He seemed to really mean it this time and he seemed almost sad when I said no again. That isn't like him. I expected him to be angry, to fight me, try to take me by force, but he just left. I don't get it."

"Maybe he's finally giving up?"

Maybe. Somehow I couldn't believe that. Vlad had three obsessions: mom, me and world domination. If he gave up me, he would automatically give up mom too. That left world domination. In fact, he had said as much. I got up abruptly and once again transformed into my ghostly alter ego.

"Where are you going?"

"To check out Vlad's house. There's something going on and I want to know what it is."

"Don't you need backup?"

I hesitated, then shook my head. "Nah, just a quick look."

I took off before she could say anything more, suspecting that she would come after me anyway. I flew high over Amity Park towards the posh neighborhood Vlad lived. I smiled when I passed the enormous house next to Vlad's. I'd lived there for a short while, when we were rich. Being rich isn't everything, but it sure was nice while it lasted.

I hesitated for a moment, studying Vlad's place and decided to just enter. If he was there I could be out of there in a second. To be on the safe side, I went intangible and invisible and floated through the wall. To my knowledge, Vlad did not have a ghost sense, but he could of course have other means to detect ghosts in the house. But I saw no evidence of that.

I looked around his house, but he just wasn't there. I remembered where the ghost portal was and went to take a look at it. To my surprise, I didn't see the hideous painting that usually covered it up, but instead looked at the swirling green that was the ghost zone. Vlad leaving his portal open?

I jumped when the bell sounded and went to the door, sticking my head through invisibly, to see who it was. Jazz was standing there, an impatient look on her face. I grabbed her and pulled her through the door.

"Oh. It's you. I should have known," she said when I turned visible.

I didn't even bother to comment on that or on the fact that she followed me when I told her not to. She never listened to me. Then again, I never listened to her either so I guess we're even on that.

"Come have a look," I said to her instead, and she followed me through the house.

She took a special interest in the library, which didn't surprise me. She didn't take out any books, but just stood in the middle of it, looking around. Finally, she walked over to the desk that was cluttered with books and examined them, being careful not to disturb them too much. I watched her with interest as she frowned at the stacks of books that were sitting on the floor everywhere. I was just about to ask her what she was thinking when my ghost sense went off.

I shot forward and whisked her away, turning her intangible and invisible at the same time.

* * *

I rested my head against the rock and stared into the spluttering flame of the torch. It wouldn't be long now before we would have to light the next one. George said there should be more of them, probably buried somewhere in the rubble. I reached out for my bowl and drank the last of the water, my hand shaking. George looked at me oddly.

"I knew there was something strange about you," he said.

Strangely enough, that was the only comment he made on finding out that I was Danny Phantom.

"I'm tired," I said, meaning it this time.

I closed my eyes and let sleep take me.


	5. Under the stairs

* * *

**Chapter 4: Under the stairs  
**

* * *

"The whole place was strange," Jazz said as we were sitting in my room, me on the bed and her on the swivel chair, "It was not...Vlad. All those books on the floor in the library. The open portal. The mess in the lab. You can say about him what you want, but he's a very tidy person."

I didn't see what the big deal was and told her so.

"Look," she said, "It would be the same if you became all tidy all of a sudden."

She looked at my room pointedly, clothes laying everywhere, school books stacked haphazardly next to my desk, trashcan overflowing with soda cans. She had a point there. The only time I had started cleaning my room of my own accord was when I had split myself into 'hero' Danny and 'party' Danny. The thought of that still made my head spin, having two sets of memories of the same events, each from a slightly different angle.

I sighed and let myself fall backwards on the bed. The headache was still there and I just couldn't think straight. Fortunately there was Jazz to do it for me, but right then I wished she would do it somewhere else.

"It's probably nothing," I said, rubbing my eyes, "Vlad's after world domination again and I'll deal with him as soon as we find out what his plan is this time."

She took the hint and left. I closed my eyes and fell asleep in my clothes and awoke when somebody was banging on my door. I opened my eyes groggily and tried to figure out what was going on.

"Come on Danny, you're late for school... again!"

My mom's voice. This was bad, usually my alarm clock woke me up and if that failed Jazz did. Now that I thought about it, I seemed to remember that she did, I just went back to sleep again. I rolled from my bed with a thump and my mom stuck her head around the door.

"Hi sweetie, Jazz has already left, she couldn't wait for you. I hadn't realized you were still sleeping." She looked at my wrinkled clothes, clothes that I obviously slept in. "What's the matter, are you ill?"

I shook my head and picked myself up from the floor. At least the headache was gone. I couldn't believe I slept through the entire evening and night, without interruption from any ghosts. But I wasn't about to complain.

"Hurry up," my mom said, "I'll make you some toast, you can still make it to first period if you run."

I glanced at my alarm clock and saw that I had in fact ten minutes. It would take a miracle to be in time for first period, luckily I did have such a miracle available in the form of my ghost form. I could fly to school and be there in like five minutes. I quickly put on a clean shirt and raked my fingers through my hair to put some sort of order to it, ran downstairs and practically threw myself out of the house while grabbing the toast.

It wasn't raining today but the sky was still overcast with gray clouds, and there was a sort of damp chill to the air. The streets were still wet and I shivered a bit, wishing I had thought to bring my coat. I ran to the corner of the street while taking a bite of my toast, almost choking when it went the wrong way. Running and eating toast was obviously not a good combination. When I rounded the corner I wasted no time, but jumped up in the air while transforming into my ghostly self.

I sped up and rose up high in the sky, flying over the familiar buildings and houses of my neighborhood, dragging my backpack behind me by it's hinges. I was sure everything was there this time, as I never unpacked it the night before. Too bad I didn't do any homework.

I made it to the school just in time and transformed into Fenton in the restrooms. Just as the tardy bell sounded I burst into the classroom. Mr Lancer looked at me disapprovingly but said nothing and I started walking to the back of the room to sit with Sam and Tucker. I didn't see the gleeful smirk on Dash' face – if I had I would have been more careful – and just as I passed him he stuck out his leg, sending me sprawling on the floor.

The whole class laughed and I scrambled to my feet, red faced from both anger and embarrassment. Sam looked at me intently and mouthed 'eyes' to me, so I quickly closed them as not to reveal the angry green glow coming from them. I managed to make it to the back of the room without further incidents or slips and made a mental note to myself to take it out on the Box Ghost later.

The morning went by uneventfully however, no ghosts showing up at all. I also managed to stay awake in all my classes, due to the fact that I slept for almost 10 hours the night before. It was a very strange experience, nice actually, to be able to answer a teacher's question, much to their surprise. I swear they sometimes ask me sudden questions in class just to be able to give me detention for not paying attention.

Lunch came and went, Tucker and Sam having their usual squabble about meat versus vegetables and still no ghosts showed up. At the end of the day we met at Sam's locker and after she collected all her stuff we went to Tucker's to do our homework, sitting between his numerous PDA's, two computers, and various other equipment. We discussed math problems, the likelihood that Mrs Tetslaf would fail Paulina in P.E. because of her long nails, Vlad's strange behavior and the taste of soy milkshakes.

And then, finally, for the first time that day, my ghost sense went off. A strange feeling came over me. Had I _missed_ fighting? After only one day without it? After all my complaints about it? I grinned at Sam and Tucker, who were already collecting their various ghost equipment, two thermoses, Tucker's lipstick and a small ecto gun for Sam that I had borrowed from the weapons vault at my parents' house.

After transforming I took off through the roof, while Sam and Tucker walked down the stairs at a more leisurely pace, casually saying goodbye to Mrs Foley. They would go wherever the sound of battle came from. As it turned out, they didn't have to go very far.

"Ghost child," a familiar booming voice said behind me as soon as I left the house, "Face thy doom!"

I dove sidewards on instinct and the massive ecto blast that was meant for me hit the roof of the Foley's house instead, causing a big hole in it.

"Hey," I shouted, "Be careful with that!"

I formed a massive green ecto ball of my own and threw it at the Fright Night, who was hovering about twenty feet away from me, sitting on his horse and holding his flaming sword. He evaded my ecto ball and came right at me, swaying his sword. I evaded him and shot him again, hitting the mark this time, but only succeeding in pissing him off. I knew I had to get that sword away from him and plunge it in some pumpkin, but as it wasn't Halloween right then that posed a problem.

He swirled in mid air so quickly I hadn't thought it possible and came at me again. I tried to evade him again but the hooves of the horse hit me painfully and sent me crashing on the ground right in front of Sam and Tucker, who were standing on the sidewalk in front of Tucker's house. They bend over and helped me up, and just as I stood I saw the Fright Night point his sword at me and charging another massive ecto blast.

There was no time. Sam and Tucker were right behind me, I couldn't evade this time so I braced myself to take the hit. Sam cried out in fear as it hit me and started blasting the Fright Night with her ecto gun as I went down. Tucker jumped sideways and uncapped the thermos he was holding, but the Fright Night evaded the blue vortex easily and shot me again. My vision started to blur and I vaguely heard the screeching of tires on the road as I passed out, transforming back to my human form.

* * *

The first thing I was aware of was pain. Pain coming from my chest and spreading over my entire body, a burning sensation as I tried to breathe. I gasped for air and rolled my head sideways, noticing that I was lying on something soft.

"Danny? Can you hear me sweetie?"

The voice was familiar and I tried to open my eyes to see who it was, only succeeding after several attempts. I saw a blurry face hovering above me, brown hair framing it.

"Mom?" I rasped.

"Hush now," she said, "Lay still. We'll get you to a hospital."

She moved away from me, but I managed to grab her arm. She turned and looked at me quizzically. The rest of my surroundings came into view and I realized I was laying in the back of the GAV. I could see the various switches and dials that were everywhere, half of which I didn't even know what they were for.

"I'm fine," I said to her, not wanting to go anywhere near a hospital, "Just give me a minute."

Her eyes widened when I tried to push myself up and she gently pushed me down again.

"You're not fine," she said firmly, "That ghost hit you and you passed out, you could have a concussion."

"No concussion, I don't even have a headache," I lied.

I pushed her hands away and quickly sat up before she could push me down again. I felt nauseous for a moment and I had trouble breathing, but I tried to cover that up as best as I could and I must have succeeded, because she let me go and eyed me critically. There were voices outside the vehicle and Sam stuck her head inside.

"Oh thank God you're alright," she said when she saw me sitting up.

I grinned at her to show there was nothing wrong with me, but of course she saw right through that.

"You know Mrs Fenton," she said, "Why don't we take Danny home while you just go on examining... whatever you're examining."

Mom looked at me hesitantly and I nodded vigorously. She smiled at me, seemingly relieved, either because I was alright or that she could continue ghost hunting, or maybe both. I slowly stepped out of the car and leaned on Sam, but only a little bit. I didn't want my mother to see that Sam and Tucker would have to practically carry me home.

I looked around a bit, but there was really not much to see. There were a few scorch marks on the pavement, right next to the tire marks from the GAV. My father had probably been driving. He was standing close to the door of the Foley's home, talking to Tucker's mother while staring at some device he held in his hand. I didn't know what it was but it seemed to point straight at me. I wanted to get the hell out of there.

Tucker rushed up and stood next to me, ready to catch me should I fall. I slowly started walking, every now and then supported discreetly by either Sam or Tucker. As soon as we were out of eyesight they grabbed my arms and put them on their shoulders, just in time because my knees buckled and I would have fallen. They glanced at each other worriedly and I groaned.

"Just get going guys, let's get out of here," I said and they dragged me all the way home and up to my room.

I let myself sink on the bed and closed my eyes, feeling really tired. I heard Sam and Tucker talking, then Tucker left and I felt someone sit on the bed and start pulling my shirt up.

"Sam?" I said, "What are you doing?"

She said nothing and held very still so I opened my eyes to look at her. She just sat there staring at my chest and I looked down to see what held her attention. My chest was one big black bruise.

"Oh," I said, "So that's why it hurts so much." I looked at her. "Um, you can pull it down now you know, now that we've eh, seen it..."

She blushed and let go of my shirt, but before I could pull it down again Jazz entered the room. Great, now she would get all fussy. She caught a glimpse of the bruise before I pulled my shirt down again and I glared at her.

"Don't start Jazz. It'll be gone in a few days. You know that."

She opened her mouth anyway and I could see she was going to start a rant, but it never came. At first, I thought a very heavy truck drove by our house because the glass of water that was standing beside my bed started to rattle and move to the edge of the nightstand.

"What the..." I started, and then all hell broke lose.

My bed started to shake and Sam grabbed the edge of it as not to fall off, her eyes wide in fear. The lamp was swaying on the ceiling and Jazz was screaming that we should get the hell out of there. I suddenly found new strength as I panicked and I jumped of the bed onto the shaking floor and almost fell down. I grabbed Sam's hand and Jazz' arm and turned us intangible just in time, because the ceiling came down on us and the glass of my window splintered.

I managed to pull the girls close to me and huddling together we sank through the floor into the kitchen, and I had to let go of the intangibility, because I was literally out of energy. We found Tucker hiding under the table in the middle of the kitchen, between the rattling pots and pans and the various cooking utensils falling down.

"Out!" Jazz yelled at us, and we ran to the front door, which was stuck.

We were lucky we had Jazz at that moment, because I for one would have kept on trying to pull open the stupid door.

"Under the stairs!"

She grabbed my arm and started pulling me towards the stairs and Sam and Tucker followed. She pushed me in the closet under the stair case, all the way in the back and crawled in herself, Sam and Tucker practically falling over her to get in too. Jazz pulled me close and hugged me and for once I didn't mind, as I was scared out of my mind. I heard Tucker whimpering and Sam talking in a monotone voice, repeating over and over again "Stop, please stop, please stop..."

* * *

Just as I was telling George about the mysterious earthquake, which of course he knew about, the earth started to shake here too. Again, big pieces of rock fell down, producing more of that annoying dust, and I pulled my arms over my head in a futile attempt to protect it from the falling debris. The shaking lasted a long time, longer than it had before, and for a moment I thought that that was it, this would be the end, the ceiling would come down on us and crush us. I became all too aware of the tons and tons of rock above us. Being crushed was at the very bottom of my list of favorite ways to die, right next to being eaten alive by a shark and being dissected by the GIW.

When it finally stopped and the dust settled down a bit and I dared to breathe again, I called out for George, but he didn't answer. The torch was still on, luckily, but it had fallen down from where George had stuck it, and it was now behind a big rock, putting us in the shade. I vaguely saw a still form on the ground that could very well be George, unconscious or maybe dead.

For a moment, I didn't dare move towards him, afraid to find out that he was in fact dead and I would be here all alone in this huge coffin posing as a tunnel. I never really liked confined spaces in the first place, and talking to George took my mind of the thoughts about the weight of the rock above us.

"Don't be an idiot," I berated myself, and I slowly started to inch closer to the still form on the floor.

When I finally reached him I managed to turn him over, but I really couldn't see his face in the darkness. I would have to get the torch. I looked at the rock and sighed. This was going to be a pain in the ass.


	6. Aftershock

**Chapter 5: Aftershock**

* * *

It was quiet and dark in the confined space of the closet under the stairs. I had gradually become aware of their talking, their voices a quiet humming in the background as I wasn't really listening to what they were saying. I was totally wiped out, the adrenaline rush that I had been on when the earthquake began having long left my system, and I had nodded off in Jazz' arms.

But now I was awake again and I wondered how long I had been sleeping. I felt stiff and sore from laying in a very uncomfortable position, pushed against the wall with one leg awkwardly under me and my head still on Jazz' shoulder. I moved a bit.

"Danny?"

Jazz' voice was hoarse, as if she had been crying, and I tried to look at her, but it was too dark to see anything but a vague outline of her head. Some light came through the half open door, so it couldn't have been a long time since we entered. I tried to sit up, but there really wasn't room for me there, and I tried to suppress the panic that was always lurking in the back of my head when I was in a confined space. I'm not claustrophobic, I just like to be able to move.

"Danny, are you OK?"

Sam's voice sounded really close to me and I felt her hand on my leg for a moment. I realized there were four of us in the closet and nobody could move very much.

"Yeah," I said, wondering if that was the truth, "What time is it?"

"Seven thirty AM dude, you've been out for a long time," Tucker said.

We had been in that closet for fourteen hours and with me sleeping, they had been unable to get out because the door was blocked by something very heavy. But at least we were alive.

"Why didn't you wake me?" I asked, feeling guilty because I could have gotten them out earlier.

"We couldn't," Jazz said, and I heard the strain in her voice. She must have been really worried.

"And the phones won't work," Tucker added, sounding really annoyed, "No signal."

Which meant some serious damage to the communication antennas of the town. I held out my hand and concentrated for a moment, forming a small, glowing green ecto ball, letting it hover about an inch above my hand. I could see their anxious faces now, staring at me wide eyed.

"I think I'm OK now," I said, letting the ecto ball disappear, "I'll get us out of here."

I took a deep breath and formed the two white rings around my waist. Jazz gasped, because I was very close to her and the rings went right through her, but I knew it wouldn't do her any harm. Immediately after I had transformed I started hovering, finally getting some space. I phased through the door and the object that was obstructing it and looked around. It was quiet here too, the morning sun shining through the broken windows, lighting the mess in the living room.

Everything had fallen down, the TV was broken, cupboards were overturned. The couch had moved against the door to the closet under the staircase and a large beam had fallen on top of it, immobilizing it. I touched it, turned it intangible and moved it away, causing part of the ceiling to cave in on me.

"Danny! Are you OK," Jazz yelled as she pushed the couch away with the door, shoving and slamming it until the opening got big enough for her to squeeze herself through.

"Yeah," I said shakily and reverted back to my human form to get rid of the rather large gash in my left arm. I didn't want to be scolded again by Jazz about my clumsiness.

Jazz, Tucker and finally Sam crawled out of the closet, looking flustered and disheveled. Tucker painfully stretched his arms and glared a little at Sam.

"Next time, lay in your boyfriends arms," he said to her.

Sam and I were just about to scream our familiar 'we're not lovebirds' line when Jazz cut in.

"Where's mom and dad?"

We looked at each other. We had been in here for fourteen hours, surely somebody should have come looking for us?

"I'm hungry," Tucker said.

I was too. We carefully made our way to the kitchen, stepping over the fallen pieces of ceiling, the overturned furniture, our feet cracking on the glass from the windows. The kitchen was an even bigger mess. Two of the cupboards had come off the wall and had crashed on top of the table, which was broken in half. There were no pans left on the shelves and everything was covered in a thick layer of dust.

The refrigerator had toppled over as well and I shuddered as I thought about the mix of ectoplasm samples and regular food that was in there. Jazz seemed to think the same because she left the refrigerator alone and instead started rummaging through the debris, finding some bread and peanut butter.

We ate in silence, each thinking their own dark thoughts about what could have happened to our parents. They would have come rushing home if they could, as soon as the earthquake was over. There weren't many reasons, other than that they were seriously injured, for them not to show up.

"We probably should go look for them," I said when I had finished eating.

We agreed that we should go to Tucker's house first, to see how Tucker's parents were doing and because that was the last place we had seen my parents. After that, we would drop Sam of at her place, since her parents would probably be worried too. I phased us through the still stuck door, after carefully checking the street for witnesses of this unusual occurrence. There were people in the distance, but they were too far away to notice anything strange.

The street was a mess. Debris was everywhere, large chunks of buildings on top of cars, small bricks and dust everywhere. It seemed that Fenton Works was actually in a pretty good shape, the neighbor's house had completely collapsed and I hoped there was nobody in there. It was also impossible to drive on the street with all the rubble there. The only positive thing was that the rain from the last couple of days had stopped and the sun was shining.

And then we heard it. Crying. A soft sound, coming somewhere from the ruin that used to be our neighbors house. I stood still and closed my eyes, listening to it for a bit and felt my heart sinking. Opening my eyes again I turned to Jazz, who had a knowing look on her face.

"You guys check on all our parents. I think Danny Phantom is going to help out a bit here."

Jazz and Tucker nodded but Sam shook her head and I felt a feeling of warmth go through me when I saw the determined look on her face. Nobody told Sam what to do.

"You find your parents and try to contact mine, let them know I'm fine and I'm helping Danny."

We didn't argue with her and Tucker and Jazz took off in the direction of Tucker's house, making their way through the rubble on the street. I hoped there wouldn't be any more earthquakes, because some of the houses looked like they could collapse any time.

I looked up and down the street again and changed back to Phantom in a bright flash, foregoing my usual outcry. I hovered to the collapsed house next to ours and closed my eyes again, trying to listen to the crying again. Sam followed me quietly, climbing on a big chunk of wall that had toppled over, her combat boots scraping on the stone.

"Hush!" I whispered, "I'm trying to listen."

I went intangible and let myself sink into the debris, listening intently at the faint wailing. Two small children lived next door to us, a little boy of about five years old that I baby sat once, and a five month old baby girl. The wailing I heard sounded as that of a small baby, and I hoped the little boy and his parents were alright too.

I flew through the fallen beams and collapsed walls, getting closer to the sound, and then I saw her. She was laying on the ground, under her cot, all dirty, her face wet from the tears.

"Hush now, I'll get you out," I said softly, but of course she didn't understand me and started crying even harder when my cold hands grabbed her and turned her intangible.

I shot up through the rubble and flew over to Sam, who was still sitting on the wall, waiting for me to come out with an anxious look on her face. I flew to her, placed the baby gently in her arms and she took it, turning to me with a worried look on her face.

"How about the rest of the family?" she asked, "Did you find her brother? The one you baby sat three months ago?"

Sam had come by to see how I was doing and had found the both of us asleep on the couch with the TV on. Naturally she had taken a picture and had shown it to Tucker, who then had commenced commenting to Sam about what a great father I would be.

I went intangible again and floated through the debris of the house again, but I didn't hear any sounds. I started by going back to the place I found the baby, figuring either the little boy or his parents would be close by, but I didn't find them. It was very hard to discern what I was looking at, I had no idea whether I was in the kitchen or in the basement. It was just a big pile of junk and I realized we had been very lucky.

At last I found them, little Mat and his mother. They were crushed beneath a large beam, their faces bloody and gray, looking very dead. For a moment I just hovered there while I thought about little Mat sneaking into our kitchen to get cookies, my father pretending not to see him as he sneaked his hand into the cookie jar. I had never seen death from up close before, strange thing, because I'm a ghost. Gently I phased them out one by one and laid them down on the street. Sam looked at me, still holding the baby, but I shook my head and went in again to search for the father.

It took me a long while and I started to get tired, because I still wasn't well and going intangible for a prolonged period of time took a lot of energy. But it was worth it in the end, because I found him and he was still alive, though unconscious. I couldn't see if he was injured badly, but I phased him out of the debris and placed him on the ground close to Sam and the baby. She looked relieved.

"We have to get him some medical attention," I said and looked at the end of the street, where I could see people moving around, probably rescue workers that were looking for people in the damaged houses and apartment buildings.

"Stay here," I said and took off in the direction of the rescue workers.

Surprised shouts welcomed me when they saw me. About ten men in coveralls and wearing hard hats were carefully removing debris from what seemed to have been the entrance of an apartment building. Some others were standing back near some vans and an ambulance. The rescue workers stopped digging and, when I got closer, backed away from me.

"Stop!" I yelled, "There's an injured man down the street, near Fenton Works! He needs a doctor!"

They stopped and stared at me as if I were... a ghost. Right. This wasn't going to work.

"Look," I said, trying to sound as convincing as I could, "I want to help, alright? I can get people out. I can go through the debris to locate people. Please, I just want to help."

They looked at each other hesitantly, and then one of the men that had been lounging near the ambulance stepped forward.

"I'm a doctor," he said.

He didn't look like one, with his blue shirt and jeans, but I didn't care. He grabbed a very doctor like bag and started to climb over the rubble, but I just grabbed him and lifted him into the air. He gasped in surprise and I mumbled an apology before flying back to Sam at high speed. I put him down next to Mr Brown and he turned to look at me for a moment, shivering. I shrugged.

"This was the fastest way," I said.

"Next time, give me a little warning," he said sternly.

I smiled apologetically and turned to go back to the rescue workers. They were carefully removing the rubble from the collapsed apartment building, but I simply phased through the walls and debris and searched the whole building, or what was left of it. Almost immediately I encountered the dead body of an old woman in her night gown, and I phased her out of the building and put her down on the street.

The rest of the day went by in a haze as I went in and out the apartment building and the other damaged and collapsed houses, finding more and more people, some alive and unhurt, some injured, a lot of them dead. The houses here weren't built for resisting earthquakes, because this is a geological stable area. Amity Park did not have earthquakes.

Somewhere in the afternoon I was sitting with my back against a damaged car, a little bit away from the rescue workers who were also taking a break. They had accepted my help, recognizing I could get people out a lot faster than they could, but they were still uncomfortable when I was near. I leaned my head back against the cool metal and closed my eyes for a moment, telling myself not to fall asleep and to remain in ghost form. I can sleep practically anywhere, but transforming into my human form in front of these rescue workers would be a bad idea.

A shadow cast over me and I cocked one eye open to see who it was.

"Did you eat?" Sam asked, and I shook my head tiredly.

She threw me a cheese sandwich and sat down next to me, rubbing her arm against mine. I resisted the sudden urge to hug her and looked at her instead. She was wearing some blue overall and a white helmet, her face was smeared with black streaks and she looked really tired.

"I volunteered to help," she said, "I told them I was eighteen, they bought it. I suppose they didn't really care."

"You look tired."

"So do you."

We sat quietly for a while. I glanced in the direction of the other rescue workers, who were staring at us.

"Let's go someplace where they can't see us so I can eat this," I said.

For the benefit of the rescue workers we walked away instead of flying, rounded a corner and I let go of my ghost form, staggering for a moment. Sam looked at me, but didn't say anything and I quickly devoured the sandwich.

"Got something to drink with that?" I asked with my mouth full, and she handed me a small water bottle. I gulped it down quickly and felt a little better after that.

"What happened to Mr Brown?" I asked.

Sam shrugged. "They took him and the baby away. To the hospital, I suppose. They had to carry him over the debris on the street, but it's better now, some bulldozers have come and cleared part of the street so the ambulances can get through."

She stared in the distance for a moment, a forlorn look in her eyes.

"What's wrong?" I asked her.

She remained silent and wrapped her arms around her body, taking a few steps away from me.

"Sam?"

"There...there was this day care center..." she said and I could hear the tears in her voice, but her eyes remained dry.

I stepped closer to her and did what I didn't dare a few minutes before: I hugged her. Today had been hell, not only for me but also for her and we would never be the same again. She returned the hug hesitantly and we stood there for a while, unmoving. I wanted to cry, but I didn't dare, because I was afraid that if I started I wouldn't stop. Finally we let go and I looked around.

We were nowhere near Fenton Works anymore as I had been flying all over town, going to the places where my help was needed most. It wasn't enough though and I already felt guilty for stopping to rest. But I could only stretch myself so far and then there was that big black bruise still adorning my chest that hindered me in my movements.

I was just about to ask how she had found me when her cell phone went off. We looked at each other in surprise and then she started fishing around in her overall to find it and I thought things I shouldn't think.

"Hello?...Mom! Where are you, are you alright?...Yes, I'm fine...no, I'm with Danny... no I'm not coming home, they need us here...WHAT!"

She stood quiet for a moment, listening to whatever her mother was saying and then handed me the phone.

"It's for you... your parents want to speak to Danny _Phantom_..."

* * *

George looked at me with bleary eyes, gleaming in the light of the torch that was once again stuck between some rocks. It had indeed been a pain in the ass to retrieve it, as I had had to climb over the rock to get it and then back again, holding it. Any normal person would have just jumped over the stupid rock. Hell, a three year old could have done it.

"Your...your parents called you? But I thought they didn't know...?"

I shook my head.

"They didn't. Still don't, as far as I know. But they had heard that I was helping and had asked the rescue workers if they knew where I was, and they told them I had left with Sam. So they contacted her parents and they called her."

I let my head fall backwards against the wall of the cave, feeling dizzy. The hunger was gnawing at my stomach and I had no idea how long we had been in there and consequently how long I hadn't been eating. George wasn't faring much better, being so much bigger than me he needed a lot more food.

He was still laying on the ground, because a large piece of rock had hit his leg and it seemed broken. I knew he must be in a lot of pain but he didn't show it, instead, he kept urging me to keep on going with my story whenever I slowed down or stopped as it became too much for me. It was strange though. As much as I had kept quiet during the past years, so much I wanted to talk now.

I looked at the empty bowls.

"Are you thirsty?" I asked him.

"Yes."

I closed my eyes. There was no way he could go to the barrel with water again. I would have to go, but I wasn't sure I would make it. I climbed to my feet and grabbed the torch.

"Good luck," he grunted, "Don't fall down 'cause you'll stab yourself with your ribs."

I almost laughed and with that encouraging thought I left him.


	7. Reconnaissance

* * *

**Chapter 6: Reconnaissance**

* * *

I was floating a above the blackened, bare hills, about fifty yards away from them, invisible. I knew their ghost tracking devices wouldn't pick me up here, not with all the distortion. My ghost sense was going crazy and every now and then I shivered.

The area was a complete wasteland. There used to be trees here, a forest that began almost immediately outside Amity Park with high trees and lots of wildlife. We had gone hiking there, had gone on school trips to find bugs and sometimes I had come there by myself to practice my ghost powers. There was nothing here now, about ten miles out of town, and with nothing I mean not even a tree trunk. It was just bare rock, blackened by some fire that incinerated everything. I could still feel the heat coming from the ground.

Sam was talking to my parents, who were standing next to what used to be the road, but was now a somewhat darker black streak in the landscape. The GAV was standing there too, as were several police cars. And behind the cars, in the distance...

I shivered again, this time not from the cold that my ghost sense caused, invoking my ice powers deep within me. The sky was a swirling green, turning and twisting in that all too familiar way: the ghost zone. We were standing on a rift, a huge portal torn into reality. The magnitude of it was staggering and I didn't dare to think of what might have caused it. But I knew I was looking at the cause of the earthquake.

I turned my attention back to Sam, who was beckoning me to come over. I trusted her, so I turned visible and floated closer to my parents, who looked at me warily. I landed a little bit away from them and walked closer, figuring that they would find that less threatening. My mother was holding an ecto gun and I saw her finger twitch close to the trigger. I gulped, but she wasn't pointing it a me, for now.

"Ghost boy," she said in a disapproving tone.

"H-hi M-Maddie," I stuttered, eying the gun.

She waived her hand behind her, in the direction of the swirling green sky.

"Do you know anything about this?" she asked.

I shook my head. My mother sighed.

"We need you to go in and do a reconnaissance mission," she continued, "Can you do that?"

I nodded in surprise. My mother asking me to do something for them? Then I realized the reason. They didn't dare going in. I was expendable. She must have seen the look on my face because she explained.

"As you may or may not know, normal technology doesn't work in the ghost zone. This is as far as we could get. That's why we built the specter speeder, unfortunately it is out of commission because of the earthquake. If we go on foot, it'll take weeks to search the area and we don't have a lot of manpower because everybody is helping out in the town. Now, we do have this little headset prepared, it is shielded from the ectoplasmic radiation."

She held out her hand and I looked at the small device. It looked like a regular head set, but it had a small camera attached on it and it was slightly glowing green. Quietly I took it from her and put it on my head, adjusting it a little for it to be comfortable. My mother reached over and then stopped, her hand only inches away from my head, staring me in the eyes. Then she shook her head and touched the headset, turning it on. An image appeared on a small screen my father was holding.

One of the policemen approached and said something softly to my mother. She nodded and turned to me again.

"Um, Phantom...," she hesitated, "Thank you. I heard that you've been helping out in town."

I didn't trust my voice, so I just nodded again and started hovering. I turned to Sam, who was looking at me wide eyed, did a mock salute and then I left, quickly picking up speed over the desolate, barren hills, venturing into the portal area.

"Phantom," my mothers voice cracked loudly into my ears and I would have jumped if I hadn't been flying.

"Yeah," I said, turning to look back at them.

"Just testing."

I grumbled something unintelligible and continued on my way. The landscape didn't change for a while, and I quickly lost sight of the people standing on the road. I didn't know where the center of the portal was, but I didn't need to. I could feel it, a huge burst of energy, coming from an area straight ahead, a thundering feeling in my veins. It made my ghost sense go haywire and I had to stop several times to get it under control or I'd freeze over.

"Why are you stopping?" my mother asked.

I didn't answer right away, because my teeth were clattering.

"Phantom?"

"H-h-hold y-your h-horses," I clattered, "I'm f-f-freezing over. G-give me a m-minute."

I heard voices in the background, maybe Sam trying to explain my ice powers to my parents. I didn't care. I tried everything Frostbite had taught me to get it under control, calming myself, focusing, taking control instead of letting it control me. I imagined the images they were receiving were shaking like mad, but I got it under control, finally.

"You OK?"

My mother actually sounded concerned. I smiled.

"Yeah. It's weird though. There's something ahead that contains a lot of power, I mean really a lot of power. I think that's what keeps this portal open. It's messing with my ghost sense."

As soon as I said that, I got hit by a massive ecto beam from behind me. I let out a scream and plummeted to the ground. Thinking of earlier experiences I went intangible, but to my surprise I still hit the ground, hard. I rolled quickly, knowing that whoever had hit me would hit me again on the ground and the ecto blast just missed me. I looked up at the Fright Night, who was hovering above me, seemingly examining me.

And then I felt it. Something... cold, from the ground, little needles pricking into me in my legs, my arms, my back. In fact, every part of me that had touched the black rock that I'd fallen on. My knees buckled and I fell down, grunting in pain. It was the material of the rock, I realized, I shouldn't touch it, it was draining my energy. I tried to hover, but instead transformed back to my human form. I heard cold laughter above me.

"You're doomed, Ghost Child," the Fright Night said and then he left.

"Danny?" Sam's voice sounded over the headset, but I could hardly hear her over the static.

"I'm alright," I said, more out of habit than anything else.

I wondered if they still got the images from the tiny camera and if so, what they thought of the fact that I now looked human. They must have seen me because I had been looking at my hands during the transformation. At least they couldn't see my face.

Then I wondered if the Fright Night was right and I was doomed. Whatever that black stuff was, it was interfering with my ghost powers. But did he really know what it would do to a half ghost? I stood up straight and closed my eyes, concentrating, looking for that cold core inside of me that triggered my ghost form. I didn't have to reach far, it was still there, but it seemed... diminished somehow. I needed to get off this rock.

"Phantom, what happened?" my mother asked, "Can you continue?"

I heard a muffled 'No!' in the background, but decided to ignore that. This was too important, we had to find out what was going on there.

"Yes," I said, "I need to get of this rock though. It's... draining me."

I took a deep breath, balled my fists and reached, pulled, strained myself and I managed to form the two rings around my waist, slowly traveling over my body, transforming me into something that could float. As soon as the transformation finished I did so, trying with all my might to go up higher, away from that black rock.

I had been tired to begin with when I started, but now I felt completely wiped out. It would probably be a smart thing to do to return to my parents and their relative safety, but nobody has ever accused me of being smart. I checked it the headset was still there and continued on my way in the direction of the power source.

"Are you still recording this?" I asked, as I felt myself approach the source of the disruption.

"Yes. What was that white light just now?"

"That was a kind of transformation," I answered truthfully.

"What kind of transformation?"

"I don't want to get into it right now. Maybe I'll explain it to you someday."

"Why did your hands become... human?"

I didn't answer that. The static was getting worse now, a constant hissing and cracking in my ears, very annoying. The headset cracked in my ears again and I could hardly make out what my mother was saying.

"What .. he.. mean ... 'you ... d...med'?"

"I don't know."

I didn't know if they heard me anymore and I started to feel lonely. Even if they hated my guts, my mother's voice in my ears was still some sort of life line, a connection to the real world. The area I was entering now... had nothing to do with reality.

It looked like something from a comic book, with sharp, dark colors, green, purple, black. Sam would have loved this, I thought, but then again, this might be too much even for Sam. Ahead, the sky was still that swirling green from the ghost zone and in fact I knew for certain that I was looking into the ghost zone because I saw a few floating purple doors.

Behind me, the sky was it's normal, cloudy self. I looked briefly at the blackened hills behind me, where there used to be the forest. Before me, there was a huge black plain, going on endlessly. I couldn't see the end of it, where the horizon should be it just sort of merged into the swirling green ghost zone. About half a mile away there was a hole in the ground, and that was the source of everything that had happened here.

I stopped.

"M-mom?" I asked, desperately wanting reassurance and forgetting that I was Phantom.

Static.

There was really no need to go any further, I could see perfectly well from up here. I hung still in the air, trying to stop the overwhelming coldness that not only came from that black pit in the middle of the plain, but also from inside me. My teeth started clattering again.

More static in my ears. Somebody was trying to say something, but I couldn't hear them. Slowly, I moved forward, while struggling to keep from freezing over.

"I-I don't know if you're still hearing me," I said, "I hope you do. I'm gonna take a look a that hole."

The static in my ears increased and I could make out faint, voice like sounds as if they were answering me. I floated slowly in the direction of the hole, feeling a sort of pulling sensation. I was going faster and faster and I realized with a shock that the thing was pulling me in.

I definitely didn't want that, so I started to pull back, first a little and then more, to no avail. I felt like I was on some kind of 'tractor beam', like you see in those science fiction movies, pulling me harder and harder as I neared that hole.

For a moment I felt helpless, then I did the only thing I could do. I reached out and thought of warmth, of breathing, of heartbeat. The two rings appeared instantly and when the transformation was almost complete I crashed into the ground, tumbling a few times until I came to a stop against a black rock which was conveniently placed in my way.

I laid there for a moment, stunned. Then the stinging started again, the feeling of being bled. I scrambled to my feet and started wiping the black dust off my hands and face, more frantically when I realized at what rate I was losing power. I had to get out of there fast before I wouldn't be able to get out at all. I turned and looked at the hole, only fifty yards away from me.

Just a quick look. To see what was down there.

I ran forward, going as fast as I could on the uneven ground, painfully aware of all the cuts and scrapes all over my body. The hole neared. My heart was pounding in my chest at a rate that couldn't be healthy. No sound came from the headset.

About three feet from the edge of the hole, I came to a complete stop. This was it. I would take a look, hope that they were recording it and then get the hell out of there again. The idea to have to run for a mile to get a sufficient distance from the hole to be able to transform again almost sent me into a panic, but I managed to suppress it. First things first.

I stepped closer to the edge of the hole. It was perfectly round, about fifteen feet across. And bottomless.

* * *

I made it. Don't ask me how, I honestly don't know, but I managed to get back to George with a bowl of water, only half filled because I spilled the other half somewhere along the way. I was gasping and wheezing, and at one point I had tripped and fallen down on my hands and knees. I had sat there for a while, waiting for the stabbing pain to subside and vaguely wondering if George had been right and I had managed to pierce my lung with one of my broken ribs. When after a while – a long while, I think – I was still alive, I scrambled to my feet again and tracked back to the barrel of water that was standing near the end of the tunnel. Luckily I hadn't come far when I had stumbled.

I drank some water and this time looked around. Before, I had been in a hurry to get back to George, but hurrying holding a bowl of water in one hand and a torch in the other while having trouble keeping upright even when leaning against the wall hadn't worked too well. So I rested.

The end of the tunnel almost seemed clean compared to where we were sitting. Not much had come down here. Just a big rock. I stared at it for a while, sipping the water, letting it soothe my dry throat. From under the rock, I could see feet sticking out. Somebody got crushed.

I shuffled closer and carefully placed my bowl on the floor. I examined his boots. Not really my size, maybe a little too big. But they didn't have holes in them. I grabbed a boot and pulled. Bad move.

Immediately pain seared through my chest as my ribs shifted. I let out a strangled cry and collapsed on the floor, hugging my chest. Breathing hurt. With each gasp I felt the stabbing pain of my cracked ribs pushing into my lungs. Yet I had to breathe.

I laid very still. A long time passed, long being relative. It could have been five minutes or five hours, but when in agony five minutes can feel like five hours. Still, it was a long time. The pain subsided somewhat. I felt a coppery taste in my mouth and something trickle down my chin. I resisted the urge to cough. Instead, I pushed myself up on my feet again, leaning against the wall for support. Taking shoes from a dead man was bad. I got it. Slowly, I turned, grabbed the bowl and the torch once more and made my way back to George.


	8. Approaching Darkness

* * *

**Chapter 7: Approaching Darkness**

* * *

I watched silently as George drank from the bowl I had handed him moments before. He was trying to take careful sips, but he was having a hard time of it. His face seemed gray and sweaty, even in the orange light from the torch. If he felt as bad as he looked, he was having a hard time. Of course, I wasn't doing much better.

"Hey kid," he had rasped when I had finally gotten back from the end of the tunnel, "I thought you died on the way."

It wasn't really a joke, but we both pretended it was. He smiled at me and I grinned back, and then handed him the bowl.

"Have it all," I said, "I already had some at the barrel."

So he drank and to take his and my mind of things, I told him about the reconnaissance mission I had done for my parents, the discovery of the now familiar tear in the fabric of reality and how it had affected me. I fell quiet when I ran out of breath, so we both stared at the torch for a while. The last one. The other torches laid in a corner, burnt out and completely black. They looked like bones. Blackened bones. George saw me looking at them and seemed to come to the same conclusion.

"Won't be long until we look a bit like that," he said, "Just a pile of bones." He eyed me critically. "Or don't ghost have bones?"

I tore my eyes away from the black sticks and scowled at him. "I'm as human as you are," I said.

He nodded, and let himself sink back to the ground again, resting his head uncomfortably on a rock. I had tried to get him comfortable when he was unconscious, but I hadn't been able to move him. He was a big man, and I, admittedly, was a small boy, small for my age because of three years of malnutrition. No wonder he had thought I was a kid.

The torch spluttered.

My eyes went wide in fear. Suddenly, the idea that we would be in the dark soon had me terrified. I had known the moment would come of course, but now that it was drawing near I almost panicked. My breathing sped up.

"Hey Danny."

George looked at me again. He'd had his eyes closed a moment before, and I had thought he was asleep.

"Yeah?" I asked.

"Want to continue your story? What happened when you found that hole in the ground. What was it?"

A story. That was all it was, a story. I realized that to George, my life was just a story like all others. It wasn't really interest or even sympathy he was feeling. We were just passing time. Because there really wasn't anything else to do except wait for death in silence.

Suddenly I resented him. I pressed my lips together and looked away. George waited.

"What's the matter," he said.

I glanced at him and looked away again. He looked surprised.

"It's not a story," I said. Suddenly the anger left me and I felt really tired. My voice was no more than a whisper. "It's my life."

I shifted and tried to pull my legs up, but it hurt too much so I left them where they were, stretched out in front of me. I studied the remains of my shoes, shoes which I had stolen from an elderly man about a year ago. He had had no chance after that. He had already been weak, and without shoes his feet were unprotected from the sharp stones and rubble. They had gotten infected. Two weeks later he was dead.

No remorse. No guilt. Nothing.

"Hey George," I said, "Ever kill anyone?"

He stared at me. No, of course he hadn't. Saint George. I leaned forward a bit, as far as my cracked ribs allowed me.

"Ever hit anyone on the head because they were in front of you when they started handing out the food? Ever push someone down the slope to divert the attention of the guards, so they won't notice you're sick and aren't really working but just pretending to? Ever watch..." My voice caught in my throat and I almost choked. "...Ever watch the guards beat the only person who stood up for you to death?"

I leaned back again, exhausted. There. I'd said it. I had told him I was as human as he was but in truth, there wasn't much humanity left in me. I had survived. It had been my only goal, the single purpose of my existence. And now, here, in this tunnel, it all seemed pointless. I looked up and beyond our little circle, stared into the darkness that led away from us. The darkness that would soon engulf us, crush us. And somehow that was fitting.

I relaxed. My breathing slowed down to the usual short gasps. I was starting to get really short of breath. Maybe my lungs were giving up. Or maybe they were slowly filling up with blood, effectively drowning me. It didn't really matter.

"I'm sorry," I said.

George tried to shift and groaned. Then I felt his hand on my ankle.

"It's OK, kid," he said, "I understand."

I knew he didn't. I had seen the disgust and fear in his eyes when I had started my rant.

"The hole I found," I said, "It was some sort of tunnel, a worm hole if you like, leading deep into the ghost zone. The power of it... it was – still is, as far as I know – huge. It tore a hole the veil, so big it might as well no longer exist. There is no real difference anymore between the ghost zone and the real world. There is no way to close it."

"How did it get there?"

I stared into the flame of the torch. Did it flicker again? Would we be in the dark soon? How would I know if I was dead when it was so dark around me? Was death dark? I vaguely recalled stories from people who had had a near death experience, how they had gone down a tunnel, how there had been light at the end... and then I realized that even if those stories were true, it wouldn't be for me. George, maybe. Probably. But not me.

"One man," I said. "Vlad Masters."

* * *

I was hovering a little bit away from my parents, who were busy watching the footage of my trip to hell for the second time, softly commenting to each other or pointing things out on the screen. They were standing outside, at the back of the GAV, looking in. Sam was standing close by, also watching, but also keeping an eye on me. It was starting to get dark again, and the policemen had left. There wasn't anything they could do here.

None of us could.

I let myself drift to the side of th GAV and put myself to the ground, forcing gravity to take a hold of my almost nonexistent weight. I sat down and leaned my back against a wheel. I needed some form of normalcy, an idea of having a grip on my life. I felt afloat now, running with the tide of the events. The earthquake, my parents, the ghost zone that was taking over. I was terrified and tired. And strangely excited by the power of the hole.

It had to come from somewhere deep inside the ghost zone. Something or somebody had unleashed an incredible power and used it to tear the veil between the ghost zone and the human world, literally obliterating it. I wasn't sure it could ever be reestablished. The power of it was just to much.

The hole had almost pulled me in. I had looked down in it, and had been struck by the endlessness of it. Not that I could see that. I could feel it. I was looking at something ancient, something deep inside the ghost zone, some sort of black hole. It was the deepest black I had ever seen, not just because of the lack of light, but also because it seemed to suck out the light from everything around it.

I had stared at it for a long time.

When I finally had managed to find my way back to my waiting parents and Sam, the sun had set and the gray day had transformed into dark night, even darker than usual because of the lack of light coming from the town. From my numerous trips down here in the forest at night, I knew that Amity Park was always present, its orange glow ever lighting the environment for miles and miles around it. Now, there was nothing. The town was dead.

Sam sat down beside me. She didn't say anything. I felt that she wanted me to talk what I had seen, not the clinical report I had given to my parents, but what I had really seen, had felt. I wasn't sure I wanted to do that yet. Not because it was hard to talk about it – I could always talk to Sam about my fears, like I could always talk about complex things to my sister – but I wasn't sure about what I felt yet.

Because part of me didn't think it was such a bad idea to have a permanent fuse between the human world and the ghost zone. After all, wasn't I too some strange ghost human mixture? I should feel right at home here. This was my territory. My world.

I pushed that thought away. I was a freak, an accident. I shouldn't exist. I should either have died that day in the lab or should have lived on, normal, human, loser. I had done neither. I had no right to impose my strange existence onto the world.

A stray thought hit me. Vlad would.

Sam nudged me. I looked up at her.

"You're awfully quiet for such a talkative guy," she said.

I pulled up my legs and rested my chin on my knees, wrapping my arms around my legs. I stared into the direction I knew Amity Park should be, wondering what I still was doing there. I could get out of there, take Sam with me, return to the town. I could help the rescue workers there, there were bound to be more people trapped under the collapsed buildings. In fact, as long as I was functioning, I should help them. I could save lives. You could even argue that I was killing people by just sitting here, moping

And yet I didn't move.

"Sorry," I said.

Sam laughed a little. "You have nothing to be sorry about," she said, "You should be proud of yourself. You've saved lives today, you've gone and explored that scary place where the earth suddenly changes into ghost zone even though you were scared to death." She was silent for a moment. "You scared me, Danny. I thought we'd lost you when we lost the connection."

I hugged my legs even tighter. "I'm sorry," I said again. I turned my head to look at her. "You should be proud of yourself too," I said, "You've helped. You volunteered to help when you could just have gone home to your parents and wait it out."

Sam shook her head. "I could never have 'waited it out', you know that."

I knew. Sam was compassion. When she believed in something, she went for it, utterly and completely. Nobody could stop her. She was a force to be reckoned with. For the firs time I wondered what she would be like when she grew up. If she ever would.

"Sam," I started, trying to somehow hold on to my train of thought while at the same time trying to put into words what I had felt when I saw the source of the gate to the ghost zone, "I think..."

I never got any further, and in fact, I later realized that this had been the last time we actually had had some sort of meaningful conversation. Everything that came after that always had had to do with weapons and strategy, strengths and weaknesses, war. And then it had been too late.

"Phantom," my mother said, "Please come take a look."

So I got up, shot Sam an apologetic glance that promised to get back to the conversation later and joined my parents who didn't know I was their son, again explaining about the hole, about the black dust, how it had stung, what Fright Night had said. They treated me with a sort of cool indifference, as if they still hadn't decided if I were good or bad, but were willing to give me a chance. It made be both happy and sad. Happy because this was the first time they actually listened to Phantom and didn't try to shoot me. Sad because I really needed a hug from my mother and have her assure me that everything would be alright, even if we both knew it wouldn't be.

We were interrupted by a loud, booming voice. A rumble came over the bare hills, making the GAV shake on its wheels. Startled, we all ran to the front of the car and stared into the direction of the sound, the same direction I had gone to investigate the portal.

The sight was almost indescribable. While we had been busy staring at the screen in the back of the GAV, something approached. A lot of somethings. Ghosts. Thousands, millions of the, as far as the eye could see. My ghost sense was going crazy, but it had been like that since I had arrived there, so I hadn't paid much attention to it. A mistake. Not that it would have helped me if I had anticipated their arrival.

We all just stood there, open mouthed. In retrospect, I don't know why we were so surprised. We had expected something like this, at least I had. They didn't just open an enormous ghost portal and then sit back and enjoy the view. The portal was there for a reason. And with ghosts, there really was only one reason.

My father was the first to move.

"Invasion!" he yelled, running back to the GAV and grabbing a huge ecto cannon from it, "Ghosts!"

My mother followed suit, not because she thought she could actually accomplish something, but more out of habit. If my father held a gun, she had better have one to, just in case he missed. And my father nearly always missed his intended target. She came back with two smaller ecto guns and handed one to Sam, who took it with a grim look on her face. Then she turned to me.

"Well, Phantom," she said coolly, "This is where you show where your loyalties lay."

I stared at her, then at my father and finally at Sam. "You're kidding," I said, "Haven't you figured it out yet? I. Am. On . _Your_. Side."

My mother gave me a long, hard look, and then an almost imperceptible nod. She turned away and I too turned to watch the ghost invasion approach. About three hundred yards away from us, just behind the crest of the next hill, they halted. It was then that I saw a familiar figure in the middle of the crowd, glowing slightly brighter than his surrounding underlings. On his head, a flaming crown. On his hand... something shiny. I couldn't really see it, but I could feel it. I could feel the ring of rage on his finger. And in his hands, an enormous, pale green glowing sword.

"Vlad, you fool," I muttered, in shock, "What have you done?"

* * *

"Wait," George said, "I don't get it. There is Vlad Plasmius and Vlad Masters, and you're saying they're the same person? That he's like you? A..."

"Freak."

Miraculously enough, the torch was still burning. I was thirsty again, my throat dry from all the talking I had done. But I couldn't go for more water anymore. If the torch went out on the way, I'd never make it back. And if there was one thing worse than dying in the dark, it was dying in the dark, alone. Even the thought that George might die before me scared me. And he probably would, by the looks of him. I was though. I was afraid I would last a long time.

"I wasn't going to say that," George said.

"I know."

I suppressed a cough. My eyes drooped. Maybe it would be best to just close my eyes and go to sleep. Maybe I wouldn't wake up. I would just dream a little, and then die.

"Don't die on me yet kid," George said.

He sounded scared. I looked at him and realized that he was just as scared of dying alone as I was. For a moment I moved my arms and legs aimlessly, and then with purpose. I scooted closer until I was sitting next to him.

"Don't worry," I said, trying to make my voice sound light and failing miserably, "I'm still here. I'm not going anywhere. I'm just... a little... tired."

At that, my head bobbed forward. There was no stopping it. My eyes closed and my tired body shut down all by itself, demanding rest, demanding time to heal even if it was pointless.

I slept.


	9. On the Border

* * *

**Chapter 8: On the Border**

* * *

The aura of power that hung around Vlad was incredible. It made my hair stand up at the back of my neck and sent tiny shocks through my nerves, making me twitch every now and then. I stared up at him as he stood, floated, before us, holding the flaming sword in front of him. He seemed larger than before, a giant. His face was twisted in an evil smirk, a mockery of the expression he usually wore when he met my father.

"Well well well, what have we here," the enormous ghost who looked like Vlad but somehow wasn't said, "Jack and Maddie. _And_ Phantom. Interesting development." He moved closer and involuntarily I moved back a little. "Don't you know," he said to my mother, ignoring my father completely, "That young Daniel here is a dangerous ghost?"

"Cut it out, Plasmius," I said, feeling the usual anger rise in me quickly, "You know that they never are in any danger from me."

He raised his eyebrows, and again I had the feeling that, although it seemed to be Vlad, the ghost in front of me only tried to mimic Vlad's usual behavior. Unnerving.

"Is that so, Daniel," he said, "Are you absolutely sure?"

"Yes," I spat. He couldn't know about my evil future self as that future had never happened and never would.

Suddenly he was right in front of me and, before I could move away, had wrapped his hand around my throat and lifted me into the air. I struggled, tried to pry his hands away from me but he held me in an iron grip.

"Do you feel it, Daniel," he whispered, "The power. It burns. I can do anything, command any being, ghost or human. I'm invincible. Unstoppable. You cannot fight me now. Join me. Let us rule together. You can be my son."

I stared into his black eyes, and realized that, although Vlad was still there, the arrogance, the yearn for power and the desire to have me as his son, there was also something else there. Something infinitely darker. Something that was taking over. Vlad had known it. He had come to me the day before it happened. He had wanted me to join him then, had said it'd be the last time he would ask. I now realized he knew it would be the last time he _could _ask. After the opening of the portal, Vlad wasn't himself anymore. And yet he had wrestled enough control back to himself to repeat his request. I had to be careful.

"Um," I choked, hardly able to get the words out of my mouth due to the fact that he was still strangling me, "Can I think about that?"

He drew me close. Mgy nose was almost touching his. I didn't like the view. His eyes were deep dark pools that reminded me a little too much of the black hole I had discovered.

"You have until sunrise," he said.

Then he let a brief ecto blast go off in his hand, casually almost, and I cried out and started twitching and kicking. Somewhere deep inside of me I could feel my ghost form shutting down and I struggled to keep it going, to not transform into Danny Fenton in front of my parents. I knew I would have to tell them about me soon, I just didn't want them to find out this way. That was one reason.

The other reason was more sinister. If I ever gave in, which thought at that moment seemed both preposterous and strangely alluring, I didn't want them to know who betrayed them. Better they hate Phantom, I was used to that. I couldn't bear the thought they'd hate Danny Fenton too.

Whenever, during the past few years, I had visited the ghost zone I had felt both at home and terrified. I always wanted to get out as quickly as possible to my own bright, human world with warmth and TV and cookies. But whenever I was in the human world, the ghost zone was pulling, whispering, making its presence known in the background, like white noise. In the human world, I was a ghost. In the ghost zone, I was a human. I belonged in neither.

I belonged here. Because this was where both worlds met.

Vlad let go of me and turned his attention to Maddie. He smiled at her and I saw her wince. Then he bowed, turned and withdrew to his army of ghosts. We all stared after him as he disappeared behind the hill.

I drifted to the ground and rubbed my throat. Good thing I didn't need to breathe when I was a ghost. Sam rushed to me and grabbed my arm.

"Are you alright?" she asked, sounding slightly breathless, as if she had been holding her breath.

"Yeah," I said vaguely. I avoided her eyes.

She became all businesslike. "So, we'll have to go back to the town and gather as many ghost weapons as we can. We'll have to arm the police with them, ordinary guns won't help them. I didn't think I'd ever say this, but it's too bad there's no army base near this town, they would really be some help. Maybe the GIW can help us, I know they are in town..." She frowned when she saw the distant look in my eyes. "You're not contemplating actually joining him, are you?"

My parents, who had been loading their equipment into the GAV as quickly as they could, stopped what they were doing to listen. I stared into the direction Vlad had disappeared in.

"I might..." I said, and then held up my hand to stop her from interrupting, "If I thought it would accomplish something. But with me joining him, he would still destroy the town. So no."

Sam looked relieved. My mother looked at me as if she was trying to see what I was thinking. I gave her a blank look. She frowned and resumed her loading of the GAV. My father just shrugged it off, obviously taking my words at face value. I had said I wouldn't join him. That was enough for my father. I had always been better at deceiving him than deceiving my mother. Or Sam, who was eying me critically.

"You're up to something," she said.

With that, she turned around and started helping my mother disassemble a portable satellite dish, portable to my father only. It needed two normal people to lift the thing. I looked at their struggling for a moment, then flew over and simply lifted the thing by turning it intangible and thereby weightless, then moved it into the back of the GAV.

I had meant what I said. I really didn't think I would be able to accomplish much if I joined Vlad, or what was left of him. I didn't know how much of Vlad was still there. Obviously, enough to still have some sort of control, to still want me as his son. I also hadn't liked the way he had looked at my mother. If I joined him, I might have some influence on what he destroyed. I might be able to save my friends and my family.

Key word here: might.

I watched them drive off in the direction of Amity Park, my parents and Sam. They would try to convince the city council, the police and the GIW of the severity of the situation. They would try and mobilize an army to fight off the ghosts. And they had only about eight hours to do it in.

When they were out of sight, I let myself down on the ground and sat down on it. I was beside the road, siting on the sand and the pebbles laying there. Slowly, I pulled off my gloves and dug my hands in the sand. Here, this far away from the portal, it felt a little tingly and warm to the touch. It would. As a ghost, I was cold. Everything felt warm to me.

I transformed into my human counterpart. Instantly, the sand turned cold around my hands. The slight tingle remained. Here I was, a ghost human hybrid, close to the border between the ghost zone and the real world. I could walk into the ghost zone a little further, or I could walk away from it and be a little bit more human. It was up to me. It didn't matter what I was. It was all about who I chose to be.

Danny Phantom would never join Vlad Plasmius.

* * *

I awoke with a start, and found myself in total darkness. It was so dark that I couldn't even tell if my eyes were open or closed. The cave still smelled a little of gasoline, because that was what the torches had been drenched in, but our last hold on life had died on us. Now, we were just holes in the darkness. It was like we weren't there anymore, because in so much darkness, nothing could really exist.

I moved my hand a little and it hit a rock. And that simple fact sent me into a panic.

I couldn't see. My eyes could go anywhere, focus on anything and it didn't matter. My vision was gone. There was no more difference between the cave and the rock weighing down on us, ready to crush us. All was dark. I waved my hand in front of my eyes as if to wave away the veil, as if the darkness had substance, slowly at first but then more and more frantic, until I was helplessly flailing my arms in all directions and kicking my feet against the ground and the wall of the cave. My chest hurt like hell from the uncontrolled movement, yet I couldn't stop. I had to get out of there, I had to breathe...

Vaguely, I became aware of a voice in the darkness, a voice saying my name over and over. At first, I didn't want to listen, too caught up in my idea of being crushed.

"Danny, come on, don't do this to me, stay with me kid, stay focused. It's only darkness. There's nothing wrong with darkness. It's just a lack of light, nothing to worry about. It isn't like the view here was that spectacular anyway. Danny?"

I stopped flailing my arms around and tried to stop the trembling. The moan that had been coming out of my mouth ceased. What was left was a trembling wreck who still let out occasional small whimpers. When I realized how pathetic I was I went completely silent. I just hung against the wall, keeping my body rigid.

"Are you alright?" Jake asked.

No. Not Jake. George. I shook my head. "Yeah," I said.

My voice was all wrong again. It didn't used to be this raspy. In fact, it hurt to talk, so I stayed silent until I could no longer bear it.

"How long since the torch went out?" I asked.

"I don't know," George said, "Long."

"Hours? Days?"

"I don't know. Not days. We'd be dead."

"We're not dead?"

George laughed, and after a moment, I laughed with him. Not hard, that would hurt too much. Just a chuckle, and even that was painful. It didn't last long. It really wasn't that funny. George moved a little, I could feel his body shift. Then he touched my arm.

"See?" he said, "I'm still here."

I grabbed his hand and squeezed it. He was still there, warm and breathing. George was my anchor. As long as he was there, I wouldn't lose it completely. After a moment, his hand fell away. George's strength was fading quickly. I didn't need to see him to know that. If I cared to focus on him, I could feel the life seeping away from him. He sighed.

"Do you think that after we die, we'll see our family again?" he asked.

"Your family?" I asked, "They're living in Amity Park, aren't they?"

He didn't answer for a while. Time stretched strangely. In darkness, there really is no such thing as time. Time is measured in difference. Movement. Change. Here, in the darkness, nothing moved, nothing changed. Hours, minutes, seconds, they were all the same.

"I lied," he finally said. He sounded forlorn, sad. I felt cold.

"What do you mean, you lied?" I asked, "I thought you said they were living under the ghost shield? There is a ghost shield, right? My mother is operating it from Fenton Works, right? Or did you lie about that too?" I got agitated. "There isn't a ghost shield, is there! That was just wishful thinking from your part! You told yourself your family was safe, there was a ghost shield, ghosts couldn't get to them..."

"There is a ghost shield," George interrupted me, "It's just... it's not functioning very well. There are power failures sometimes. And then ghosts attack." I could hear him swallow. "One day... _that_ day, it failed and we couldn't get away and my beautiful girls... they were just laying there and their eyes..."

His voice failed. I heard his quiet sobs, and for a moment, I allowed myself to feel his agony, his loss. Then I got angry and pushed it away. I wasn't angry at him though. I was angry at myself. Angry for letting him in, allowing him to break through my wall, for showing him my weakness. I had been past caring for other people and I should have stayed that way. Although George had been nice to me, he had also lied to me. My anchor suddenly had become transparent, intangible, slipping away from me. I was alone again. I had thought at least my mother was safe, and maybe Tucker. My father was dead. I had seen Jazz and Sam die. And Jake, he had left me too. They had all left, had left me here in this hell hole, had all let me down. Even George.

"Be glad they're dead," I said, "At least they didn't have to live through this."

That shut him up. I could feel his anger at me.

"You," he said, "You..."

"Me," I said, "Don't pretend you're shocked. I told you what I was. And in answer to your question, no, I don't think we'll ever see our family ever again."

And angry silence fell over the cave. Neither of us moved.

"You don't mean that."

Didn't I? I didn't want to mean it. I was never meant to be this way. But being this way had saved my life the past years. I couldn't afford to dwell on the past, to mourn my friends and family. I had had to live by the day, by the moment. And, I realized, in doing so, I had lost myself.

"Tell me about my mother," I said.


	10. I'd rather die

Chapter 9: I'd rather die

* * *

Maddie Fenton was untouchable. She was strong, independent and very much in charge. Nothing seemed to touch her, any news, good or bad, seemed to slide off of her. She worked day and night, hardly taking the time to sleep or to eat, to keep the ghost shield up. Fenton Works had been partially rebuilt, although the top floor and the ops center had been too badly damaged to be restored. She slept in the basement, next to her equipment, and she only left the house to work on the ghost shield generator in the backyard, made out of the original ghost shield generator and equipment raided from Axion Labs.

Surrounding her were a few trusted people who helped her find supplies – mostly gasoline to keep the generator going -, food, things to make weapons with. Damon Gray was one of them, as was Valerie, Dash Baxter, the former mayor Mr Montez and Mr Brown, our former neighbor who had lost his wife and son during the earthquake. George was responsible for repairing houses under the ghost shield, together with a team of men and women he raided houses that were too damaged to repair, took out anything they could use to fix houses for people to live in under the ghost shield.

The ghost shield. First put up two years ago, after the people had been living mostly underground for a year, trying, and failing, to avoid the ghosts that were raiding the town. The only thing that saved them was that ghosts were in essence not a very organized lot. They raided randomly, doing their own thing, chasing and possessing people whenever they felt like it, not when they were commanded to do so. Vlad's hold on the army seemed tenuous at best. Still, he was all powerful, unapproachable. They had considered attacking him, but only in their most desperate moments.

The people of Amity Park, the few hundred that were left, in general tried to make the best of it. They didn't know what the situation was elsewhere, they didn't know what had happened to the GIW or the army or the government. For all they knew, Amity Park was the sole surviving community on earth. And they were struggling. The ghost shield failed on a regular basis, and usually the ghosts noticed something like that immediately. There were too few Specter Deflectors to protect everybody, and usually, when the ghosts attacked, it was a race against time to get the shield up again. They were on constant vigil.

And they all looked to Maddie.

* * *

The town was dark and quiet when I finally returned. I hovered above the town and looked down on the collapsed buildings, the rubble, the dust that was everywhere. I couldn't imagine anybody being alive down there. Yet near the center, where I knew the central police station to be, there was light, more obvious because of the lack of light anywhere else. I slowly descended and landed next to the building, in the dark shade between the brightly lit windows. As soon as I touched the ground, the two rings appeared around my waist all by themselves, as my body successfully rebelled my prolonged use of my ghost form in the most strenuous of ways. I staggered and leaned against the wall, fighting off the waves of fatigue washing over me. I was completely and utterly drained. And the night wasn't over yet.

I straightened. There were people inside the building, their presence, their life force more obvious now that the town around me was dead. I could feel them inside, a pulsating glow, a glow, I knew, would resuscitate me in an instant should I care to make use of it. I didn't. I wasn't a ghost. Mostly.

I stepped into the light and made my way to the door. I pushed it open and entered the brightly lit hallway of the police station, squinting. Voices behind a door on the other side. I crossed the reception area to the other side, pushed it open a little further and then leaned against the door frame, taking in the occupants of the room.

Two, judging from the stripes on their uniforms, high ranking police officers, two other men in suits I suspected were also police officers, a small, bald man I recognized as Mr Montez, the previous mayor of the town. In the back, Mr Gray, leaning over somebody sitting behind a computer, typing furiously. Next to them, curled up in a chair and looking battered and bruised, Valerie. My father, orange hazmat suit looking crumpled and dirty, looking both sullen and proud. Sullen because he obviously had been silenced. Proud because...

I looked at the center of the room, behind the table cluttered with papers and maps. In the middle of them all, a shining presence, having all eyes firmly trained on her as she was talking, gesturing, convincing, my mother.

My vision swam for a moment, but then it cleared again. They hadn't noticed me yet, which was fine by me because I needed a moment to pull myself together again, to get up and get moving and shake off the tiredness that threatened to bring me down all of a sudden.

The door on the other side of the room opened and a familiar figure pushed her way in backwards. Once inside, she turned around, holding a tray of steaming, multi colored mugs. I stared at her. Sam, getting coffee for the people in power? Then I smiled as I watched her pass them and make her way to Mr Gray and companions. She was just about to put down the tray next to the man behind the computer when she saw me.

"Danny!"

The tray was roughly put on the table, causing some of the coffee to spill, and she rushed through the room towards me. My mother stopped in mid-sentence and let out a cry of both joy and anguish. Then she pushed aside the people who surrounded her and closely followed Sam. Moments later I was almost crushed in a two way hug.

"Mom," I gasped, "Sam. Need. To. Breathe."

It took some doing to get them to let go of me, but finally both of them backed away a little and allowed me to sit down on one of the chairs. Sam looked embarrassed by her sudden display of affection and I grinned at her. She looked away, grabbed one of the coffee mugs and handed it to me. I accepted it gratefully.

"Danny are you alright?" my mother asked, totally ignoring the men who were pointedly studying a map on the table, obviously thinking they had more important things to do.

Which, in fact, I agreed with, but I was feeling a bit selfish at the time. I needed my parents, I needed to be assured that everything would be alright and I couldn't take the cool indifference they showed to Phantom.

"Yeah," I said, taking a sip of my coffee, "Just a bit tired."

My father joined us and slapped my shoulders rather forcefully. I winced as some of the hot coffee spilled over my fingers.

"I'm proud of you son, I heard you've been helping rescue workers digging for people trapped under buildings!" he said, oblivious.

I glanced at Sam, who nodded. We'd always been good at coordinating our stories with one glance. And we'd had a lot of practice at it. I nodded at the people at the table.

"What's with the war conference?"

Sam's face darkened. My mother looked over her shoulder.

"It is a war conference, of sorts," she said, "We're planning the defense of the town until the army and possibly the GIW get here." She gave me a scrutinizing look, the look she aways gave me when I was trying to skip school by pretending I was ill. "I should get back to them. Try and get some rest, Danny, you too, Sam. Plasmius gave Phantom until sunrise, we have to be ready before then."

She turned and walked back to her conference. I looked past Sam and now saw who was sitting behind the computer: Tucker.

"Tuck!" I said happily.

He glanced over his shoulder, grinned at me tiredly and returned to whatever he was doing. I looked at Sam questionably.

"He's programming... I'm not sure. They placed ghost detectors around the city perimeter, and they are signaling something. Tucker and Mr Gray are writing a program to interpret the data we're getting."

"Oh," I said. I looked at Valerie next, who seemed to be sleeping, incredible as it might seem, sitting there in that very uncomfortable position. "What happened to her?"

"She was at home when the earthquake happened. Building collapsed on her. She was very lucky."

Lucky indeed. I closed my eyes for a moment, remembering how I had searched building after collapsed building, looking for people who were still alive, finding preciously few of them. Too much death today. I swallowed.

"Where's Jazz?"

"I'm not sure." Sam sounded hesitant. I looked up. "Look," she said, "I know you hate talking about what happened to you, but... Jazz is on the counseling team, helping people who were injured, and the rescue workers who had to deal with... Well, you know. You've seen it. You've seen more than me, I think."

I shook my head. My hands were wrapped around the mug and I found it's warmth comforting. For some reason, I was cold. I shivered a little. Then, from out of nowhere, somebody dropped a blanket around my shoulders. I grabbed it with one hand.

"Thanks, dad," I said.

My father grinned at me and pointed to Valerie, who now also had a blanket placed carefully over her.

"Your mother said you should get some sleep," he said, "So off you go. And you too young lady," he added.

Somehow my father never quite managed to sound stern. I frowned and was about to shake my head, opening my mouth to start counting off the reasons I shouldn't, couldn't sleep, when Sam simply grabbed my arm and pulled me up. My father's grin widened. Sam pulled me out of the room, through a few doors into a small office which had a worn out couch next to the desk. She pushed me down on it and handed me the blanket, which had slipped off my shoulders.

"Get some sleep, Danny."

"But..."

She looked pained. "I know. I don't think I can sleep either, but you have to try, we have to try." She looked over her shoulder at the door, and then bend forward. "We need Danny Phantom tomorrow. We need to fight with all we've got, and we need you. Without you we don't stand a chance."

I thought about the ghosts that were out there, the magnitude of their numbers, and knew that we didn't stand a chance even with me fighting on their side. But we had to. We had to hold until the army, or the national guard, or the GIW came to our rescue. What exactly they could do once they arrived I didn't know, but I had to hold on to some sort of idea that everything would work out as long as we kept fighting. I sank back in the couch and padded my hand on the empty spot beside me.

"You need to sleep too," I said.

She glanced at the door, then at me and shrugged. She sat down next to me and I arranged the blanket so it covered us both. Within a minute, I fell into a dreamless sleep.

* * *

My throat felt like sandpaper and my words became more slurred by the minute. I stopped talking, and immediately the silence of the tunnel threatened to overwhelm me again. I coughed, which was a mistake as somewhere inside of me my ribs shifted. I resisted coughing then, and just sat for a while, trying to get my breathing under control. I wiped my mouth, telling myself that it was just saliva I was wiping off and that the copper taste I had in my mouth had nothing to do with it.

"Hey," George said, "Wait a minute. Did you say you can feel somebody's life force or something?"

I nodded, then realized that he wouldn't see that and let out a grunt in acknowledgment.

"So, can you feel me?"

Yes, I still could. My ghost form was extremely week, but it was still there. I was still a ghost, a freak, a freaky kid with freaky powers. Sensing people's so called life force was one of them. Sensing emotions was another, more unwanted one. I usually suppressed both. I wasn't a ghost, who fed of people's emotions.

"Yeah," I said, "A little bit. I can still... it's not completely gone." Talking about it automatically had me reach out. I was dismayed at what I sensed. "You don't... feel too good."

George let out a raspy laugh. "Tell me something new," he said.

He went silent again. Some time passed by in which neither of us spoke, until it started to really creep me out. I wanted to talk some more, but my throat hurt too much. I thought about the barrel full of water only about two hundred yards away from us. It might as well be on the moon.

"Danny?"

"Yeah?"

"Don't ghosts feed off other people's emotions?"

"Yeah."

"How about you?"

"No."

"Why not?"

I didn't know. It was just a feeling, a form of defying the ghosts that were keeping me prisoner here. Plus, it hadn't saved the other ghosts that had been thrown in here. They had tried it, but they fell apart faster than they could replenish themselves. I refused to be a ghost. I refused to fade away. Once I went down that road, there would be no going back.

"Because."

He was silent again. I wondered what he was thinking. It was very strange, sitting in this darkness, talking to somebody who was in essence just a voice.

"How about that 'life force' you mentioned. Could you feed from that?"

Cold fear grabbed me. The very notion of doing something like that was terrifying. It was bad enough that I could feel what other people felt, and that I could feel their hearts pulsating in their bodies, their blood flowing through their veins.

"No."

"You mean, you won't."

"I mean no. I can't... I've never... No ghost does that."

"Why not?"

"Because they wouldn't be able to take it. Ghosts are dead."

"You're not."

I was aware of that. What struck me how he was aware of it too, how he knew what I instinctively knew to be true.

"I... can't... won't. It would take some of the life force away from the person I took it from. It'd be stealing."

"Morally speaking," George said, his voice relentless, "About in the same category as stealing another person's shoes so he dies from an infection two weeks later?"

I grabbed a loose rock and threw it in the general direction of George's voice. It clattered against the wall. Missed.

"Shut up," I said.

"How about stealing bread from a woman who had managed to get in front of you, and then also taking your own ration so you had twice the amount? How about watching your friend die for you, never saying a word to save him?"

"I couldn't save him," I said, "He told me to look after myself and only myself. I just did what he told me to."

"How about pushing that man down the slope when you were sick?"

"Shut up," I said, "He was dying already. I did him a favor."

"How about..."

"Shut up!" I screamed.

He did. I was glad because I couldn't have uttered another sound after that. Breathing hurt, like there were razor blades cutting into my windpipe. I vaguely heard George move, groan, move again, dragging himself closer to me. I wanted to scoot away, to avoid him, but I didn't.

"I'm dying," he said. He placed a hand on my arm. "It's not the leg. I think I'm bleeding somewhere internally." His grip tightened around my arm. "If you.. could take my so called 'life force', could that restore your powers?"

Could it? Long enough for me to get out of the tunnel? Long enough to survive the black rock that would immediately start to drain it away again?

"No," I said. I tried to get out of his grip. "Leave me alone. I'm dying too."

"Danny." His voice sounded weak. "It's either the both of us die or just one of us dies."

"No."

I wasn't going down that road. Ever. Because it would turn me into something I didn't want to be. My evil future self. I'd rather die.


	11. Preparing for War

Chapter 10: Preparing for war

* * *

A hand on my shoulder shook me awake after what seemed like only five minutes. I blearily opened one eye, to stare straight into Jazz's tired face. I shifted and froze. Somebody was leaning heavily on my shoulder. I turned my head and my face connected to a flurry of black hair. I looked up at Jazz again. Despite everything, she smiled.

"Still clueless huh," she smirked. Then she got serious. "Thirty minutes to sunrise. You'd better get up."

She left the room and I tried to get my mind working again. Dazedly, I scanned the still dark room, and almost immediately noticed a figure slumped in the chair behind the desk. Tucker. Fast asleep. They must have finished whatever they were doing during the conference. As I looked at him, he opened his eyes and looked straight back at me. Our eyes locked for a moment. There was no joking or making fun in either of us at that moment. Tucker was dead serious. A scary sight. I wondered what I looked like. Then he grinned and the old Tucker was back again.

"Hey, lovebirds," he said.

The flurry of black hair leaning against my shoulder moved and I felt her body stiffen. I grinned a little and opened my mouth, so we could speak totally in sync.

"We're not lovebirds."

Sam untangled herself from me and I was glad it was still dark, so they couldn't see me blush at the fact that she had had her arms wrapped around my waist. I pushed myself off the couch, stretched my arms and yawned.

"Let's get going. We've got a fruit loop to defy."

Both my friends got up and together we marched down the hallway toward the one door that had light shining from around the edges. It felt good to be together again. Team Phantom. I felt stronger now, more rested, not only from the few hours of sleep, but also from the simple fact that being around my friends and family made me feel invincible. I was going to protect them, at any cost.

Quietly we entered the conference room, as not to disturb the people working in the room, on the phone, talking into walkie-talkies, drawing lines on a map or keeping an eye on a monitor attached to the wall, showing the outline of Amity Park and small, green dots, at some points clustering together in one big speck, surrounding it. I looked at Tucker, who was staring at the screen, looking both awed and frightened.

"What's that?" I asked, but I had a feeling I already knew.

"Ghosts," he said, "Data from the ghost detectors around town. We're surrounded."

I could see that. I wrapped my arms around myself and continued staring at the screen for a while, trying to grasp the sheer amount of ghosts I was seeing. We were outnumbered so badly it was almost funny. I looked around at the serious faces occupying the room and decided that laughing right now would be inappropriate and probably wouldn't be appreciated. Sam seemed to sense my state of mind because she punched me in the arm.

"Hi sweetie, did you sleep?"

My mother's chipper voice came from behind me and I turned around.

"Sure, mom," I said, "What's up?"

She tightened her grip around the coffee mug she was carrying in one hand and rubbed her eyes with the other. She looked very tired, with dark circles under her eyes. I could see she hadn't slept at all.

"Your father is busy assembling weapons and handing them out to the police and some volunteers as soon as they're done. Mr Gray is at Fenton Works, he's going to try and get the ghost shield up and working again, but I don't have much hope for that, because it was badly damaged. Other than that, there's not much we can do." She looked at us worriedly. "There's a shelter at the school, a lot of students and their parents are assembling there, Jazz is there too. You should go and join them."

I swallowed. I wanted to tell her I wanted to fight, I wanted to tell her who and what I was, but I also wanted to take time to do it and I didn't want to distract her at that moment. Which meant retreating, for now, pretend to run away and hide, like I always did.

"OK mom," I said, trying to sound obedient, but my heart wasn't in it. There was too much on my mind.

My mother looked at me suspiciously, as if she could sense something was up. I tried to focus.

"I will see you there, right?" I asked her.

She slowly shook her head. I felt myself go cold, but I shouldn't have been surprised. Of course she would be out in the front line, of course she wouldn't sit back and let the police handle it, she never had. Why had I thought she would be hiding, she would stay safe? I looked down at the floor.

"Please be careful," I said.

The next thing I knew I was being crushed in an embrace. Then she let go, turned around and hurried back to the serious looking people in the room. I shrugged and turned to my friends.

"What about your parents?" I asked them.

Tucker smiled half heartedly. "My mom's at the school, cooking meals. My dad's out there somewhere, with the rescue teams. I haven't seen him."

"My parents are still at home, our house wasn't damaged all that much," Sam said, "They think they're safe there. I tried to talk them into leaving, but they wouldn't." Her eyes softened. "They did allow some of our neighbors to stay with them, because their houses were damaged."

I nodded. "Let's go," I said.

We stepped outside and I looked up at the sky. It was still dark, but in the east I could see the sky get lighter. Dawn was approaching. I looked around, and then quickly transformed into Danny Phantom. Immediately, I felt my powers, not completely replenished, but definitely at a higher level than the night before. But there was damage too. With a sick feeling, I realized that the power I lost while exploring the destroyed area at the portal hadn't been restored at all. I had lost power there, and now it seemed I wasn't getting it back. Tucker saw my face.

"What's the matter?" he asked.

"Nothing," I said, "Come on. I'll get you some ecto guns."

I grabbed the both of them and lifted them into the air. It took us only a few minutes to reach Fenton Works. I left them standing outside and entered by simply going intangible. In the basement I heard somebody at work, using a gas lamp to light up the surprisingly large space that had been unaffected by the earthquake. I traversed it invisibly, not wanting to be seen by Mr Gray and Valerie, the latter assisting the former working on an almost completely disassembled ghost shield generator. The parts laying around looked dented and unusable to me, but Mr Gray seemed to think he could use them.

I left them to it and drifted to the caved in back of the basement, where the now dead ghost portal sat, and the entrance to the weapons vault. Both were inaccessible. I could see some attempt had been made to reach the vault, but heavy beams had fallen in front of it. The vault was unreachable for normal human beings. But not for a ghost.

I phased inside and lit an ecto ball. Rows and rows of ecto-powered cannons, guns, bazookas, wrist guns, a few thermoses which wouldn't be any use at all, and some items I hadn't a clue what they were for. I grabbed some wrist guns and some rifles, and then hesitated.

I could arm Sam and Tucker with these, but we could use the rest of it too. I phased back out, flew over to Sam and Tucker and out of my invisibility handed them their weapons. They didn't even flinch.

"Be right back," I said to them and reentered the lab.

Still invisible, I started hauling all the weapons out of the vault and placed them right next to Mr Gray, who jumped in surprise. I showed myself briefly, grinned at him and proceeded emptying the vault. Valerie was scowling at me when I was done.

"I still don't trust you," she said.

"I know," I answered.

Nothing would make Valerie trust me. I left, leaving it up to them to sort everything out and returned to my friends once more, friends who did trust me implicitly, who knew my every move. I handed them the specter deflectors I had found laying about in the back of the vault and they quickly put them on, but didn't turn them on yet as I couldn't touch them if they did. I picked them up and flew them to the edge of town, where a rather large group of people had assembled, policemen, civilians and my parents. I put Sam and Tucker down a little bit away from them and with a 'Don't show yourselves', went to go see my parents. They needed to know Phantom was still on their side.

A silence fell over the crowd as I approached, and people were watching me warily. I couldn't blame them. I was a ghost, and we were being under attack from a large ghost horde. Naturally, they didn't trust me. It couldn't be helped.

"Hi," I said, landing in front of my parents.

I felt a little uneasy landing here in the middle of an army which enough fire power to obliterate me, so I looked around nervously. My mother held up her hand, to signal to the people that they shouldn't fire on me. Yet.

"Phantom," my mother said, "I thought you left us."

I shook my head. "Never," I said.

I wanted to say more, but at that moment, our time was up. I shot my mother one last look and she looked back at me, grim and determined. It was that last image of her that always stuck in my mind. When I thought of my mother later, after it was all over, I remembered her like that. Her, and my father, standing by her side, looking equally grim, the goofy smile wiped so thoroughly from his face that I had to wonder if it had been there at all.

A slight, orange glow hit the horizon, quickly growing in strength. It lit up the faces of the people around me as they all turned to watch for what was for most of them their last sunrise. The silence was almost solemn. I studied those faces, committed them to memory, to hold on to later when all had gone to hell and insanity had taken over the world. One last moment of piece.

* * *

My voice trailed away again. Long silences had accompanied my now obsessive talking about what had transpired all those years ago. Even the pain in my throat didn't stop me. I'm not really sure how coherent I was at that point, or if my companion even understood a word I said. He had been oddly quiet lately.

"Jake?" I whispered.

No answer. I couldn't be alone already, he couldn't have died on me while I was talking, rambling, could he?

"Jake!" I said, with a little bit more urgency in my voice, "Talk to me Jake, don't leave me, not again..."

A slight noise, as of somebody was clearing his throat. "Still here, kid," he said.

A wave of relief washed over me. I relaxed. I was almost comfortable. My chest didn't hurt as much as it had before. In fact, I felt like I was sort of floating, like I could fly. I closed my eyes, at least, I thought I did. No way to tell for sure in this darkness. Floating was nice. I remembered flying, high up in the sky, looking down on Amity Park and its surrounding forest. Sometimes I took Sam with me. Flying is nice, she had said. Thinking about her made me almost feel her presence.

"Sam?" I asked.

I wasn't really sure if a sound actually left my mouth, but she nodded and smiled. I smiled back at her. Life was good. Everything would be alright.


	12. Chaos

**Chapter 11: Chaos  
**

* * *

War isn't clear and simple, shooting at your opponent, getting shot at, like taking turns at a fair or a paint ball game, which is fun and laughter and afterwards everybody gets to go home. War is chaos. Death. Confusion and black smoke, shadows moving around you and you can't really tell if they're friend or foe.

There was screaming all around me, curses, shouting out names of friends, frantically. I lost sight of Sam and Tucker almost immediately, and my parents soon after. Weapons were being fired, and I had to be careful not to get hit by friendly fire.

I fought. Reluctantly at first, trying my best, my hardest, to hit the ghosts, trying to keep an eye out for my friends and family, trying to protect the people that were close to me, but I couldn't. I couldn't protect everybody. People were being hit, were dying all around me, and I heard their screams and crying. Worst of all, I felt their fear, and I knew that fear attracted the ghosts even more. They could use it to strengthen themselves, to make them more powerful. I had to fight to stay clear of it, to block it out.

After a time, I sort of got into a rhythm. Blast, duck, kick, freeze, anything that came near me. I don't know how many ghosts I managed to take down that morning, but it must have been hundreds. It wasn't enough. There was no way, had never been a way, we could ever hope to win. The only thing we could hope to achieve was to buy time, to hold the town until help arrived. Which was also the major flaw in the plan my mother and the mayor had put together: it all depended on help getting here at some point. I knew they had managed to get into contact with the GIW, but they were hours away. They had promised to come. I hoped they would get here, useless as they usually were.

A horn sounded through the smoke, the simple signal that we had agreed upon. Retreat. Fall back to the outskirts of town, regroup. They had planned an organized retreat though. I didn't think even the police captains had foreseen the utter chaos we were in. Basically, we all ran. I flew with them, falling back a little, trying to protect the rear end of our retreat. I saw people falling, rolling and then laying still. There was nothing I could do for them, as much as I wanted to. There were just too many of them. I hoped Sam and Tucker and my parents were OK.

The first people reaching the damaged buildings of the town quickly took up position and started firing at the ghosts who were wrecking havoc among the people still running. The ghosts reeled in surprise, and a small cheer went up when they seemed to retreat momentarily. I had to duck to avoid being hit, and resorted to flying really low, just behind the last people running to safety. One man looked back at me briefly, almost fell down when he saw me close by, but then realized it was just me and managed to grin, before running on.

And then it all started again. And again. Fight. Retreat, leave the wounded and the dead. Fight some more. Retreat again. Fight. Minutes, hours passed by. There was no reprieve, no pause in the fighting. We just kept going and our numbers kept diminishing. In the end, I found Sam again, looking haggard, hiding behind some wall and clutching her rifle. Her face was dirty, her clothes were torn and she looked like a zombie, with blank, staring eyes. I dropped down next to her and grabbed her arm. She looked at me and it actually took her a moment to recognize me.

"Hey," she croaked, "How're ya doin'?"

I just shook my head, unable to speak. I wasn't 'doing'. I was existing. Existing for one purpose only: fight. My eyes were all over the place, checking for any sign of a ghost, that we were being shot at. Sam just stared at me, as if she couldn't comprehend what she was seeing. Then, out of instinct, I grabbed her and pulled her down, not a moment too soon. An ecto blast hit the wall just where she had been standing. Dust and small stones fell on us.

"Come on, keep going," I said hoarsely.

She clutched her gun even tighter, grimly nodded at me and then she was gone. I didn't see her again until much later, when Jazz found us, holding a battered ecto gun, looking grim and sad and very un-Jazz like, saying that the school had been under attack too, that people were fleeing, that no help was coming.

In the end, it was just the three of us.

* * *

Her face was right in front of me. I lifted my hand, tried to touch her, tried to stroke her black hair but I couldn't seem to reach her. Her purple eyes sparkled for a moment, before going back to her trademark sullen look. She grinned and I smiled back at her.

I wanted to ask her how she got here, if she meant to rescue us, when her face changed. Dark circles appeared under her eyes, her eyes were staring, her mouth set in a thin, grim line. I recoiled. I didn't want to see her like that, I wanted the old Sam back. Because somewhere, at the back of my mind I knew, I knew what she would change into, that sight had been engraved into my memory forever. I didn't want to see it again. I couldn't stop it though, like before. I couldn't save her, I failed her just as I failed everybody.

Tears started falling out of my eyes as I watched her bloody face, her staring eyes, no longer seeing, no longer feeling pain or fatigue. When she fell, when she died, I died too. Jazz had to slap me to get my attention, because I just stood there, staring at her. My mind just shut down. After that, I fell in some sort of dream state, though a nightmarish one, and I kept expecting to wake up. I never did.

Slowly, I became aware of the wall, the uneven floor, the rocks and stones poking my back. One nightmare replacing another. I should have been used to it by now. Next to me, almost touching my arm, a shaking, quivering form. I frowned, trying to remember what happened. They beat him, and I had thought he was dead...

"Hey," I said.

No answer. I tried to open my eyes, and it took me a while to realize that they were already open, it was just very dark. I didn't like it. How was I supposed to find my parents if I couldn't see? I shifted and stuck out my hand to touch the person panicking next to me.

"Hey!" More forcefully. "Hey. Jake. Wake up."

Jake stopped shaking, I could feel him relax a little.

"God, kid, I thought you died, I thought you left me all alone."

I shook my head in confusion. That wasn't Jake's voice. His voice was a low, deep rumble. This was a higher pitched voice. Different accent too.

"Jake?" I asked, uncertainly. Where had he gone?

"Danny..." I could feel hesitation, uncertainty. He didn't know how to tell me... "I'm not Jake. I'm George, remember?"

No. I didn't want to remember. Remembering was a very bad idea. I started shaking my head more vehemently. And again I couldn't stop it, the shaking earth, the tunnel, the hunger, the thirst, the pain in my chest... And then I coughed.

The world exploded. And I couldn't stop, couldn't breathe, and I felt like my lungs were being torn out of my body. It hurt. A lot. Then I became afraid that if I passed out from the pain I would choke, so I tried, unsuccessfully at first, to suppress the coughing. Slowly, I managed to breathe again.

"You OK?" George asked.

I sniffed and wiped the tears from my face. "No," I said.

The pain had cleared my head. It had also brought the resentment at my fellow captive back. I didn't want to talk to him anymore, so I stayed quiet. It had been a mistake to tell him my story, it had brought up all sorts of painful memories I could very well do without. I wanted to die in piece, not tormented by my failure and certainly not regretting what I had become. I was like this for a reason. Regrets would get me killed.

Then again, I was dying anyway.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"For what?" His voice sounded listless, as if he wasn't really listening, or as if he was in pain and had to fight to keep his attention on me.

"Everything, I guess."

"Can't..." He gasped, then groaned. "You can't blame yourself for everything."

"Yes I can. Because I am responsible. If only..."

"If only, if only, can you hear yourself talking? Nobody knows the future, Danny."

I shook my head in frustration. OK, so maybe I wasn't responsible for the destruction Vlad caused, but I should have known the fruit loop had been up to something more than his usual mischief. I wasn't sure what I could have done about it, but I shouldn't have dismissed it so easily. I had a responsibility, and I had neglected it.

"I gave up," I said quietly.

"What?"

"After Sam and Jazz were killed, I just gave up. I let him capture me, let him throw me in this place. I didn't even try to escape. I just..."

"You were punishing yourself," George said, "By staying alive."

I could hear him move again, and then I felt his hand on my arm. His grip was so tight that I hissed in pain. There was sure to be a four finger shaped bruise on my arm tomorrow.

"You're alive for a reason," he gasped.

I grabbed his hand and tried to pry his fingers loose, but he responded by tightening his grip even more.

"You're the hero. You could save us, save Amity Park, save the world. You have to get out of here, you have to fight."

I hit his arm with my fist, tried to punch him in the face. He had to let go of me. His other hand grabbed my fist in an iron grip.

"George, you're hurting me," I gasped.

"You have to... you have to avenge all those people who died, my girls, your family."

"Stop," I cried, "George, stop, I can't, you know I can't!"

His grip loosened somewhat and I tore my arms away from him. I felt him sag against the rock he had been leaning on. The strong emotion, the desperation he suddenly radiated pounded against my senses.

"I'm dying anyway, Danny. Just... I'd just like do know that my dying wasn't in vain. That at least I got you out."

"I can't get out, George, I told you, this rock, this stuff is draining my ghost side. I've got almost nothing left."

"You could if you took my.. energy."

"I told you..."

"Don't say you can't. You won't."

"George, I'm dying too. I think..." I stopped to catch my breath. Why didn't he leave it alone? "I think a rib pierced my lung. I'm coughing up blood, George. That can't be good. I'm in no shape to do anything."

"What have you got to lose?"

Everything. The last ounce of humanity I had left. I just sat there, and for the first time let the past three years pass me by. I could see myself fighting at first to stay alive, getting more cunning and devious as time passed by, and eventually becoming ruthless in my strive to live on. There was one thing I hadn't done. I wanted to keep it that way.

"The price is too high," I whispered, "I'd become a monster."

We sat there for a while, not talking, both gasping. Somehow, I'd gotten used to the darkness. It was almost as if I could see again, not with my eyes, but with my ears. I could hear our pathetic breathing echo against the rocks, I could feel around me and know where the rocks and pebbles were.

"What about redemption?" George asked.

I didn't like the way his voice sounded weaker and weaker. It wouldn't be long now, I realized. I could feel his life fading away from him.

"What about it?"

He coughed a little. "You've done terrible things. Wouldn't you want to... I don't now, make amends?"

"I can't undo the things I've done, George."

"I know, but if you somehow could manage to..."

"I couldn't then. I certainly can't now."

"You weren't desperate enough back then."

"I don't want to..." I didn't know anymore. What didn't I want to do?

"Look." He was wheezing. "Take... my life. Take me. You can have what I have left, on one condition."

He started coughing. I was silent. I couldn't do this, could I? I had promised, sworn I would never become him. My mind drifted back to that terrible, agonizing moment when my friends and parents had been blown up by the overheated Nasty Sauce. Clockwork had saved them, saved me. Some lesson that had been. Would that be in vain?

"Take my hand," George said in between coughs.

I did. I felt around in the darkness until I touched his hand and squeezed it.

"Try to take him out, Plasmius." Again a period of coughs and wheezes. "That will be my legacy, my revenge. You take it all, all my energy or life force or whatever you call it and get out of here, and you take him down no matter what it takes. You'll be my weapon."

He squeezed my hand. I could feel his desperation, his determination and above all his fear. Fear that I would say no. That I would back out again, run away again, hide again. And then I wondered how bad it would really be. He was dying. I would die too if I didn't do this. I might be able to get out in time before the black rock ate away my ghostly energy again.

I would never be able to take down Plasmius.

I might see my mother again.

"Danny," George croaked, "Please."

Maybe just this once.


	13. Alone

**Chapter 12: Alone**

* * *

I squeezed his hand, hard, clawing my fingers, digging my nails into his skin. The darkness around us seemed to thicken as I unlocked the doors in my head, threw them wide open, let the last of my humanity seep away and letting the ghost in. The cave seemed to light up around me and I could see again, the rocks, the rubble, the remains of the torches, the empty water bowl. George whimpered.

I looked at him, at his face, reveling in the fear he was radiating. He was so close, and there was no way he could escape. I could feel this knowledge in him, his fear of dying, his fear of me, and I realized that he could see me too, that we were giving off a pale glow that wouldn't have been noticeable if it hadn't been so dark in here.

I leaned forward, bringing my face close to his and baring my teeth. "You're going to die," I hissed.

I needed his fear. I could feel my power growing, could feel the cold core deep inside of me stir and start to grow, but it wasn't enough. As fast as it was growing, it was drained away at an alarming rate because I was lying on the black rock, was covered in black dust, was probably even breathing it in. He wasn't nearly as afraid of me as he should be.

I squeezed harder. "Think about your daughters," I rasped.

His anguish hit me and I let it wash over me. My breath was coming in short gasps now as I tried to keep up with my growing power. I could see his life force now, a bluish light surrounding him like an aura. It was weak though. I didn't know if it would be enough. Only one way to find out.

I couldn't contain the smile that crept up my face when I felt my body temperature drop. I hadn't realized just how much I had missed it, the power, the chill, the familiar rush of ectoplasm through my veins. George shivered.

"You know," I said, gasping for air, "Plasmius is going to win. He'll rule this world forever. You'll never get your revenge. You'll have died for _nothing_."

Anything to keep him going, to keep him in pain. Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I realized I was causing him to die in the most painful of ways, but my ghostly side laughed at my faint objections. George started radiating despair. His body started convulsing, and for a moment I worried that he would die on me too soon, before I could grab the last of his life force, the incredibly powerful resource I would need to force myself through the rock.

"Don't die on me yet, George," I groaned, trying to ignore the pain in my own chest.

George was gasping for air, tears streaming down his face. In between the gasps he tried to say something, but he never managed to get anything out. His eyes glazed. It was now or never. I closed my eyes.

Being a ghost allowed me to take energy off of peoples feelings. Typically, the stronger the emotion, the more energy. Of course, fear, despair and anger were strong emotions, as opposed to the more sedate ones like love, tenderness, friendship. Hence a ghost's preference for the former.

I, however, was unique. I was also human. A ghost could never access somebody's life force, simply because he was dead. But because I could access my ghost powers as a human, I had a place to store the energy.

I reached.

First, I merely touched him. I could feel his heartbeat, the blood running through his veins, the air rushing in his collapsed lung. I stroked the bluish aura, reaching out to it, feeling it tingle at my fingertips. For a moment, I hesitated, unsure on how to proceed, and I opened my eyes to stare down into his.

He looked back at me, in wonder. Vaguely, I realized his fear was gone, having been replaced by a strange feeling of contentment. For a moment, I panicked. I wasn't done yet, I didn't have nearly enough energy to be able to escape the tunnel. If this would be it, if I would try it now, I'd run out of it before I would be able to get clear of it and I'd be encased in the rock forever, which was sure to be a terrifying way to go, finding yourself entombed in tons of rock. It would be quick though. Better than dying of thirst or suffocating because my lungs were definitely filling up with blood.

"Is this what I look like to you?" George asked softly.

His voice was strangely clear, and it took me a moment to realize that his lips hadn't moved, but that he had spoken directly into my mind. I looked at him, taking in the blue glow he was emitting and slowly nodded. He smiled, and closed his eyes. I could feel him fading away.

"No," I said, "Don't go yet. I need more."

A dreamy expression appeared on his face. "I can see them now," he said, "My little girls. They're there."

"No!" I tried to scream, but managed only a strangled wheeze. "No! Stop! Stay! Don't leave me!"

I started shaking him, then slapped him in the face. "Look at me!" I coughed, "I'm the one that's killing you, you fool! You'll never see your kids again! You're going to hell like me, and hell is a dark tunnel, forever thirsty, forever in pain! They hate you, you left them, you stayed alive, this is your punishment!"

His eyes shot open and he blinked. A tingle of fear seeped out of him again and I grabbed it.

"You're a fool, George," I said, trying to keep him from sinking away again, "You think you can trust me? Do you have any idea what I am, what I'm capable of? I'm a ghost, George. The same as all the others. I'll drain you, I'll take everything you have and then some. I'm the same kind that killed your wife and daughters. I..."

I stopped because I was out of breath, and to take in the hatred that now started to glow around him, tainting his aura with red. I coughed. A drop of blood dripped from my mouth, splattering on the ground next to him. I leaned closer again, letting all rational thought flee from my mind, allowing instinct to take over completely. I breathed in his aura, sucking it all in, adding it to my own life force. I felt myself getting stronger, felt damaged tissue heal, felt my ribs starting to shift back into place.

I also felt his panic.

As I was draining him, he became cold. First his feet, his legs, shriveling up as the blood was cut off from them, then his hands and his arms, then his body, and lastly his head. I watched him, forced myself to look into his eyes, forced myself to feel what he felt. I saw myself though his eyes, a terrible figure, menacing glowing green eyes in a pale, gaunt face. Then the darkness closed in on him and I had to withdraw, lest he'd take me with him.

His heart struggled through one last beat and then stopped. The silence was overwhelming. I let go.

Slowly, I sat up straight and tested my arms and legs. They seemed OK. I pushed myself up, twisting a little and immediately regretted it. Clearly, my ribs hadn't been completely healed. And judging from the way I was still out of breath, neither had my lungs. But it'd have to do. I was alive. I could feel the cold core inside of me pulsating, pushing, begging to be let out. So I did.

Two rings formed around my waist, one traveling up, the other down. The coldness took over as I changed, and I had to fight down the grin on my face when the transformation completed. It had been over three years since I had felt this way, and I now realized that I had been denying my existence all that time. I was a ghost. I should stop trying to be something I was not.

I looked down on the shriveled figure on the ground, still staring up at me. I started hovering to minimize contact with the black rock, and then leaned over him. I touched his face, wincing a little at the way it seemed to wither away under my touch, then closed his eyes.

"You're dead, George," I whispered, "And I'm still here." I thought about it for a moment. "I guess I have to thank you for your... gift. Of course, it wasn't really a gift... I could have taken it any time I wanted. Maybe I should just thank you for convincing me to take it."

I should go, but for some reason I kept hovering, trying to wrap my mind around what I had just done, wondering why I had been so reluctant to do it. It had been... easy. Too easy, maybe. I frowned. There had to be a catch, there had to be a downside to it all, but I couldn't find it. I was almost completely charged, I could feel the power tingling over my skin, little sparks flying around my fingers when I wiggled them. My suit was clean, a deep, dark black, my boots and gloves a brilliant white. And there was of course the symbol on my chest, the symbol of...

Danny Phantom.

The giddiness, the elation subsided, leaving me feeling hollow. I wanted to take a deep breath, but the movement of my chest caused me pain, even in my ghost form, and apart from that it would have been useless anyway, as ghosts have no use for oxygen. I shook my head.

"I'm sorry," I said.

I meant it. I wasn't just talking to George, I was talking to everybody I had caused pain and suffering over the past three years. And it was all equally useless, they couldn't hear me, would never hear me and if they did, they'd probably never forgive me.

Redemption. That was all that was left for me now. I turned around, closed my eyes and shot up through the ceiling, through the endless rock above me.

* * *

I almost didn't make it. The moment I 'hit' the rock, it started pulling at my ghostly energy, and I couldn't prevent it from leaking away. It was like a thousand little bugs gnawing at my arms and legs and face, a tingling sensation at first, then a stinging, and finally a burning feeling. I was being skinned alive, and the only thing I could do was keep going, up and up, hoping that I would run out of rock before I ran out of me.

At some point, I started to wonder if I was really moving. Sure, I could feel the rock pass through my, every agonizing little piece of it, but the rest of my senses gave me no indication that I was making any progress. After several minutes, I was trying to visualize just how deep under the surface we really were, but I couldn't remember and all the while I was losing energy. I tried to speed up, but I couldn't tell if that worked, because I couldn't see.

Minutes passed, or maybe it was just seconds, I couldn't tell, and I was getting desperate. I had taken everything from George, had almost literally bled him dry, had purposefully kept his anguish going, prolonging his life so I could take more... it had to have been enough. The thought that I had committed that atrocity for nothing was almost too much to bear.

And then, inevitably, I started thinking about what would happen if I ran out of energy before I reached the top. I'd either convert back to my human form and get trapped inside tons and tons of rock that would crush me, or I'd dissipate, fall apart, scatter myself all over the place. Neither option seemed attractive, and I doubled my efforts, pushing myself, willing myself to go faster and at the same time trying to stop myself from falling apart. I felt the rock closing in on me, trying to crush me and I wanted to cry out in despair.

Air.

I didn't realize it at first, I kept going, pushing myself upward until I was close to fifty feet off the ground. Then I stopped and hovered. I was free. I suppressed a sob and let go of the intangibility. I was free of the black rock, free of the tunnel and, most importantly, free of the quarry. Swaying a little, I looked around.

The landscape was desolate. In the distance, hills, completely bare, covered in black dust. Above the hills, green swirling sky, the ghost zone. I shuddered, and turned around.

More hills, equally black. And darkness, no stars, no moon, just heavily overcast. I turned again, and viewed the strange division in the sky, the border, the place where the real world, if you can still call it that, touched the ghost world. And beneath it, about a quarter mile away, an incline, a hole. The quarry. Giving of a soft green glow around the edges. Completely black in the middle.

A strange feeling came over me. I wanted to go back in there, wanted to go down and change back into my human form and lay down on the hard rocky bottom of the quarry, next to my pickax and my fellow dying prisoners. Out here, I was vulnerable, anything could happen. Back there, I was vulnerable too, but at least I knew what to expect.

I shook my head, trying to rid myself of the strange notion that I belonged down there. Again I looked in the direction I knew the remains of Amity Park to be. I could go back there, see my mother, maybe be safe under the ghost shield for a little while until the Ghost King managed to permanently disable it, and then we'd all be doomed. For a long while, I just hung there, safely away from the black dust on the ground. Then I turned around and set course to the heart of the ghost zone.


	14. Timeless

**

* * *

Chapter 13: Timeless**

* * *

It was still there. Timeless, rock steady, unmoving. Like nothing had changed, as if it was just business as usual, time flowing by, clocks ticking, huge green gears turning time, condensing it, stretching it. As always, I felt slightly queasy looking at it all. Strange, how the years seemed to fade away, how I felt like an awkward fourteen year old again, watching Clockwork's tower. Even in my faded, hardly keeping it together state, I could feel the power of the place.

Hovering for a moment, I stared, wondering. Would he even see me? Would he care what had happened to me, to all of us? A bitter taste filled my mouth when I realized that no, he probably didn't. After all, he did nothing to stop it all from happening, and he easily could have. Just one click on his staff, and time would have stopped, and he'd have been able to do whatever he liked. Instead, he had let us all die, Sam, Jazz, my father... and me rotting in that quarry, digging for no reason other than to break me. How well they had succeeded.

Even in my ghost form, I shivered. It was no good, hanging out here, I should either move forward or move away, flee to Amity Park, duck under the ghost shield and be... safe. In a way, for a little while. Forget about George, forget about the quarry and if I tried real hard forget about the people who's death I was responsible for.

I moved forward. In the end, we all die.

As soon as I landed my feet on the narrow ledge in front of the tower, the huge doors swung inwards, allowing me to enter. Clockwork expected me. Figures. Without hesitation – I had left my reluctance behind me, there really was only one option open to me now – I stepped inside. The doors closed behind me, the sound of their closure echoing through the huge space.

The place was just as I remembered it. Gears everywhere, enormous gears turning slowly, small gears turning really fast. Huge mirrors, clouded over, not showing any of the scenes from the past or the future like the last time I was here. The ticking of a thousand clocks in the background, hardly heard at first, but seeping into your brain until you could no longer stand its incessant sound.

One battered thermos, standing on a shelf next to a grayish mirror.

I stared at it, wondering why Clockwork was keeping one of those around. They were pretty much useless in the ghost zone, as the excessive amount of ectoplasm threw them off. You can suck in a ghost in the real world just fine, it locks on to the ghost's ectoplasm, but in the ghost zone everything is made of some form of ectoplasm. I hadn't actually tried using one in the zone, but I instinctively knew it wouldn't work. It'd just suck in everything in its vicinity until it was full and then... well, I had never tested it. Maybe it'd just explode.

I shrugged, and was just about to turn away from the thing and find the ghost of time, when the thermos moved. I froze and blinked. Had I imagined it, or had the thing actually rocked for a bit before falling silent again? I stared at it, long and hard, and finally moved forward to take a closer look, not really wanting to but somehow drawn to it.

It was on the shelf, a little above my head, and I looked up at it. Dusty, scraped, dented. I picked it up, turned it around and then almost dropped it.

There he was. A familiar face, bulging out of the side of the thermos as if he had used his head to try and slam himself out of it. The evil face, my future face, the face of a being that shouldn't exist because I _didn't become him_. Or did I?

Shaking a little, I placed the thermos back on the shelf, wondering if I had put myself on that path again, wondering if by escaping that cave, by doing what I did to get out of there, I had somehow caused Dan to be created again. How else did he get here all of a sudden, if not for my mistakes and my selfish deeds? Feeling colder than ever before, I turned around... to stare right into the ancient face of the Ghost of Time.

With a squeak I jumped back, hitting the back of my head on the shelf. The thermos wobbled, then toppled over. I squeaked again and caught it, grabbing it tightly, and pressed it against my chest. Then I looked up, guiltily.

"I... I'm sorry," I rasped, "I didn't mean... I didn't know..."

Clockwork shook his head and waved his staff. The mirror next to me lighted up, the mist cleared, images appeared. Familiar images, images I didn't want to see, images of Amity Park in ruins, of ghosts battling humans, people running and dieing, ghosts howling and laughing, and in the middle of it all, Vlad Plasmius, or what was left of him, wearing the crown and the ring.

The image flickered, shifted, fast forwarded, and showed me on my knees in front of Plasmius, a blank look on my face. Plasmius was talking, raving, but there was no sound to it and my memory of the event was hazy at best, so I had no idea what he was saying. Probably sentencing me to a lifetime in the quarry, knowing full well that a lifetime in the quarry wasn't really all that long.

Yet I was still alive. Sort of.

I averted my gaze and looked at Clockwork, who seemed engrossed in the images on the screen. I wondered how many times he had watched them, studied them, knowing in advance what would happen to me, what I would do in the end to get myself out of there.

"No," Clockwork said, "I didn't know. I knew of the possibility of course, for I see all the paths, but seeing and knowing are two different things. The choice was yours and yours alone."

If that was supposed to make me feel better, he was failing dramatically. I looked up at the thermos again, feeling its power, feeling the angry presence of the spirit trapped within. So it was true then, I would turn into him again, wreck havoc on the world in a way far worse than Vlad ever could.

"Like that time at the CAT test. That too was your choice."

I felt like a fish caught out on dry land, opening my mouth and closing it again, feeling stupid and useless, because Clockwork knew what I was going to say anyway. Finally, I managed to make some sort of sound though.

"You helped," I said.

Clockwork nodded. I looked back at the screen and immediately wished I hadn't. This time, it was playing the last moments of George's life. I could clearly see the fear on his face and my eerie green eyes, looking down on him with a terrible hunger. The unearthly glow we were both giving off made the scene all the more gory, made me seem all the more evil. For the first time, I got a glimpse of how people must view me, an evil, mind sucking ghost. I wanted to look away, but found that I couldn't. Fascinated, I stared at myself, at George, at the bluish glow that surrounded us. Without noticing at first, I had moved closer to the screen, so close I could almost touch it...

A bright flash, and then it was gone. I stumbled backwards and would have fallen but for the fact that I remembered just in time that I could simply hover, so I sort of ended up hovering on my back, quite close to Clockwork's face. He raised his eyebrows and while doing that changed form into that of a young man. I righted myself and put my feet back on the ground.

"I wish you wouldn't do that," I said, not exactly sure of what I meant, the constant changing form or the shutting down the screen in my face.

"I know," Clockwork said, as if he knew, better than me, what I meant.

I scowled at him. He stared back.

"You know everything," I said accusingly.

"I know every possibility," he acknowledged.

I frowned. That wasn't the same thing. I tried again. "You knew this would happen, didn't you, Vlad destroying everything, killing..." The emotion came suddenly, out of nowhere, choking me. I made a strange, hiccuping sound and then, with some difficulty, cleared my throat. "...Killing Jazz and Sam and my father..."

He nodded and looked pensive. "I knew of the possibility, yes."

"Then why didn't you do something!" My temper flared and I clenched my fists. "You could have saved them! Saved everybody! Why did you let it happen?!"

"Why did _you_?"

I stared at him, speechless. "I didn't know! You knew! You know everything."

"Knowing every possibility doesn't imply knowing just which of the thousands of possible outcomes will come true. I can guess, of course," he said, waving his staff once more, this time showing the explosion of the Nasty Burger a few years back, my parents and my friends and Mr Lancer getting caught in the blast... and then being rescued by Clockwork himself.

"This never happened," he said, "But the events leading to it were strong. I interfered, saved your friends and your parents, and in the process took the thermos that contains Dan. He now exists outside of time."

I was hardly listening to him. My mouth twitched as I was staring at the horrible scene, the split second when I had known my parents and friends were dead and, worse, that I had caused it. A glimmer of understanding seeped into me.

"You saved them then," I whispered, "Why couldn't you save them this time?"

Clockwork made a motion as if sighing. The image on the screen disappeared again and I was relieved, because in all this misery I didn't need to be reminded of even more misery.

"As you know now, I can never save everybody. I saved them then, but I knew I was only postponing the inevitable. And saving them had a rather nasty side effect..." He waved at the thermos on the shelf, "... of which I am now the guardian. Interfering with time is never free of charge. Remember your efforts to negate Vlad Master's infection with the Ecto Acne?"

I hung my head. "I changed everything," I said. I looked up sharply. "But why... why didn't you just interfere sooner, before there was even a chance of creating Dan? Then you wouldn't have to guard it now..." my voice trailed away. "You did it on purpose."

A ghost of a smile appeared on Clockwork's face, now changing into small child. "Very good," he nodded, "You're learning. I needed the side effect."

I turned around and looked at the thermos. Dark Dan. A side effect. Somewhere, deep inside of me, a hysterical chuckle bubbled up and I almost laughed. To prevent me from actually bursting out laughing – something I was pretty sure would have me over the edge – I picked up the thermos again, weighing it in my hand. Then I shook it.

"Hey Dan," I said flippantly, "Did you know you're just a side effect?"

If I wasn't sure he could hear me before, I was now. The thermos suddenly radiated power, and I almost dropped it. A deep growl rose up from it, not so much a voice as a wave, reverberating in my mind.

"Not happy, huh," I mumbled, voice shaking a little. I looked up at Clockwork. "Why?" I asked.

Clockwork held out his hand and, without thinking, I immediately obeyed his silent command and placed the thermos in it. He too looked down at it pensively and shook it a little. Then he looked up at me.

"I needed a backup," he said, "I wasn't sure, but there were signs... that we might need something like him. Come."

He walked away and I followed, ducking under gears and trying to keep up with his seemingly erratic path. We came to some sort of clearing, a place where you could actually stand with more than one person. Several screens were hovering in between the gears and clocks, and the ticking sound, annoying at first and then getting on your nerves, was much louder here. It was like we had entered the heart of the castle, where everything came together. I looked up and the only thing I could see was an endless repetition of gears and dials, no ceiling, just infinity.

Clockwork placed the thermos on the table standing in the middle. It wobbled a little and then stood still. He turned to me.

"Let's... move away a little," he said.

I expected him to duck between the gears again, but instead he floated up, into the endless space that seemed to make up his lair. For a moment the image of the structure as I had seen it from the outside popped into my mind, but I quickly pushed it away as not to make myself queasy. Clockwork stopped and I stopped too, hovering beside him, trying not to be intimidated by the place and doing a poor job at it.

"You are weak," Clockwork said without preamble.

I could only confirm that, and he knew the answer to that already – not that he was asking in the first place – so I remained quiet.

"You came here because you need a weapon, a way to beat the Ghost King and restore order to both the Ghost Zone and the real world."

I opened my mouth in protest, as that was most certainly _not_ why I was there, but he held up his hand. I closed my mouth. He knew what I was going to say anyway.

"The Ghost King is the most powerful being in both the Ghost Zone and the real world. You know this, because you have seen it already when he took over Amity Park the first time. You fought him then, and you beat him, but only because your powers were magnified by a hundred."

"And even then it was touch and go," I said.

Images of that fight swirled through my head, the Ghost King's vast army of skeletons, the way I had been outnumbered about a thousand to one if not more, the incredible power the suit gave me, had me wipe out dozens of them in a single blast without even trying... and the way I was barely holding myself together now. The only reason I could hold on to my ghost form was because I was deep in the ghost zone at the moment. Returning to... whatever was left of the real world would have me revert back to my human form, and I distinctly remembered what that felt like. Pain, mostly.

Clockwork stared at me as if he knew what I was thinking, and then pointedly looked down at the thermos on the table way below. I looked too.

"Dan more than matches the Ghost King – Vlad combination," Clockwork said.

I blinked. "What?" I said.

"Dan Phantom, the most powerful ghost that ever... didn't exist. Never will exist. Never has existed. And yet he's here, through time, created by an extraordinary circumstance. With your help."

I almost choked on that last comment. I had created Dan Phantom... by literally going through hell. By watching my family die, by having my ghost side ripped out of me and then have my ghost side kill me... by then trying to prevent me from becoming him and live through it all again, only to have Clockwork turn back time a little to restore my 'normal' life and snatch my creation before it could disappear in the time line. I had had nightmares for months after that, and even during my stay in the quarry, on particularly bad nights, it wouldn't be the ghost invasion or Sam and Jazz dying before my eyes or even the aftermath of the earthquake, all those people dead, that I would dream about. It was myself I'd see, my future self, dark Dan Phantom, and the way I _recognized_ myself.

I was always relieved when I woke up in the cold and the mud and the rain.

"You...," I said, "You did this... you let me create him... on _purpose_?"

An almost imperceptible nod. "It granted the most favorable outcomes."

A wave of weakness washed over me, and I dropped several feet before I caught myself. All that fear and pain and hardship, all that suffering and killing and having me watch my family die... so he could have his weapon? Was that all I was? A weapon?

"Yes," Clockwork said, "In a way, you are. A weapon. But then again, isn't every hero?"

I laughed. For the umpteenth time, I tried to push back the hysteria that threatened to surface and tried to keep the tenuous balance between my ghostly desire for destruction and mayhem, and my more human emotional imbalance caused by years of abuse and the fact that I was essentially dying, only my body hadn't caught up on that detail just yet.

"Hero?" I managed to get out, trying to feel if any of my ribs were still in place – not that they'd cause much trouble to my ghost form as I don't need to breathe, but at some point I'd like to get human again and I might need them.

"Hero? Haven't you kept tabs on me these past few years? Have you been hiding out here, waiting for your precious _weapon_ to show up on his own? Do you have any idea what I have become?

"I need your ruthlessness."

"My... what?" I stared at him, completely bewildered.

"I need you to do what you have to and keep a cool head about it, knowing you've done it before and knowing you'll do it again."

If I had had a heart, it would have stopped right then and there. Not only had he let me create my own worst enemy, he had also let me rot in that hell hole of a quarry to make me _ruthless_?

And what a great job he had done there.

"Talk about ruthless," I muttered, staring at him.

"We all do what we have to."

Indeed we did. I thought about George, and pushed back the slight longing feeling of wanting to feel the thrill of sucking the life out of someone again. I suppose I should have been angry at that moment, but the truth is I only felt extremely weary.

"What about Dan?" I asked, "We can't just let him lose? Maybe he'll defeat Vlad... I mean the Ghost King, but then we'll be worse off than before. He'll destroy the ghost shield around Amity Park and just... kill everybody."

"No," Clockwork agreed, "We cannot. Which is why I need you. You need to control him."

"I'm weak."

"You are. Which is why you'll need to take him by surprise."

I stared down at the thermos again. The thought of controlling the extremely powerful ghost in there seemed preposterous, but I was past trying to contradict Clockwork's plans. If he said that this was the way to go, it probably was. For a moment, I tried to think why I had originally come to see him, but only a vague notion of wanting him to undo history remained. I don't know why I had thought he would do that, at that moment it had seemed like the only thing to do, the only way to set things right, to live a normal life again, with my family and friends.

"What do you want me to do?"


	15. Irony

**Chapter 14: Irony**

* * *

The first few months of my imprisonment were the worst. I was locked up tight, condensed into a very confined space so small that I couldn't even take form. I thrashed and threw my weight about, tried to focus my power and break the lock, tried to manifest through the strong, ecto enhanced material of the thermos. At some point, I managed to dent it, managed to imprint my face on it, but that particularly violent attack – born, looking back on it, from sheer panic – had left me drained. I stayed quiet for months.

I think.

Time is a strange thing when you're in a gaseous state. Thoughts can take either milliseconds or days to form, and you have no real way to tell one from the other. I tried to hold on to myself in the beginning, tried to keep some form of sanity, but I had to let all of that go at some point. There is no way you can survive – hah! Survive! - this kind of lockup with your sanity intact. Consciousness in this state was also a tenuous thing. Sometimes, I thought I heard talking, sometimes I thought I was being moved about, and sometimes I was seeing things.

Yes, seeing. Even without eyes, I could see the destruction I had caused over the years, the deaths, the misery. I called forth every moment of triumph, every kill, every time the rush became too much when I squeezed the life out of yet another useless man, woman or child. I remembered the sweetness of their terror, the utter moment of truth when their eyes broke, when their heart stopped, when their choking breath got caught and their lungs gave up. They had given me power beyond belief, had made me rise above myself, had made me better, stronger than anyone who had ever lived or died.

Those were the more pleasurable moments of my captivity.

Other moments, I was more aware of the state I was in. Those were the moments a strange feeling made me almost useless, made me thrash uncontrollably, made me desperately claw at the walls of my tight prison. Those delirious moments were agonizing and – I hate to admit it – even more frightening than the sparse and far in between moments of lucidity I had.

During those times, I could hear the clocks, ticking and ticking, until my head hurt. Have you ever listened to two clocks ticking slightly out of sync? Try listening to two thousand of those. In the end, it never failed to have me howling and usually sent me off into another delirium.

All in all, four years was a long time.

All because of that brat that managed to dupe me and suck me into the blasted thermos.

And then it was all gone. One moment, I was sort of listening to voices, the ticking of the clocks – oh, the ticking of the clocks – and the next moment, I was out. Took me a while to realize it, that the sudden expansion of my space was caused by the fact somebody released me from the thermos, but once I did, I wasted no time and pulled myself together again, forming my uniform, cape – because, after all, I had been a hero at some point – and most importantly my flaming hair. I had discovered I could do that at one point and it brought fear to those who looked upon me. And fear was what I needed the most.

Still, the moment I was there, the moment I found myself suddenly in Clockwork's tower, was also the most terrifying moment I had ever encountered. I shivered, very uncharacteristically, when something resonated deep inside of me, a hum, a hiccup, a brief feeling of numbness. Then it was gone.

It was the space. There was just so much of it, it seemed to go on and on, and I felt that I could never reach the end of it. The walls of the thermos had constricted me, but had also kept me in place, had defined my boundaries, my existence. I had felt them every day, I had used them to push against, to take out my frustration on them. They had kept me together for four years; if it weren't for the walls of the thermos, I'd have dissipated. Never mind that I wouldn't have been in the state I had been in if it weren't for them.

They were gone now.

I was down on the floor, on my hands and knees, resisting the urge to curl into a ball – the terror of Amity Park, the strongest ghost that had ever lived, did _not curl into a ball_ – but it took more effort than I would have anticipated. If you can anticipate something like this. I had imagined my release from the thermos, had imagined the destruction I would cause, but I hadn't imagined being afraid of the fact that I was out at all.

Or even ever being afraid at all.

But there was no denying it, this weak feeling, this hollow pit in my non-existent stomach, the feeling of sweat breaking out – ridiculous, as I didn't sweat – and the urge to whimper pathetically. It was fear. And as much as I liked fear in other people – sweet, nice, nutritious fear – I didn't particularly care for my own. It was extremely disconcerting. Which is probably why I didn't notice at the time that something was wrong with me.

I opened my eyes. At first, all I could see was some green blur, with some white shapes in it. I stared at the shapes for a while, and slowly managed to focus my eyes. Hands, the white shapes were hands. My own, white gloved hands. I heaved up my head, and if I had been anything but the ghost I was, I would have thrown up.

All around me were clocks, floating, swirling, growing bigger and then suddenly disappearing from sight in a nauseating way. The ghost zone was spinning around me, pulsating, assaulting my senses. Clocks were ticking, so much louder than I had been able to hear in the safety of my thermos. Tick, tock, tick, tock. It needed to stop.

"S..stop," I muttered.

Strange, hearing my own, deep voice again. I almost smiled. Tick tock tick tock.

"Stop."

If anything, the ticking became louder, more obnoxious.

"StoooOOOOOOOOP!"

My plea became a shout became a wail. A ghostly wail, my most powerful weapon, the destructive force of it capable of destroying whole towns. I felt the power build up in me, the ectoplasm rushing through my body and I let it all out, my fear and pain and frustration, until everything around me had either disappeared, was crushed or at the very least disabled. I stopped. All was quiet.

The world came into focus again, more clearly this time. I scrambled to my feet and straightened, looking around, taking in the destruction. Broken clocks, dials and gears everywhere, loads of shards of what I presumed were broken mirrors and right in front of me, a broken staff with a clock on top of it.

Clockwork's staff.

I stared at it in wonder, and then nervously looked around for the ghost of time, but he was nowhere to be seen. He must have been close by when I started my wail, judging from the placement of the staff. Possibly, it had been him that had released me, though it seemed unlikely. If it were up to him and his buddies, I'd have stayed in that thermos for all eternity.

Slowly, I made myself float, then drifted towards the staff and picked it up. It was surprisingly heavy. I studied it, tried to tamper with the broken hands of the clock on top of it and waved it around for a bit, but nothing happened. I dropped it. The thing was useless, the only ghost that had been able to do something with it was Clockwork, and he was... where was he? Not near, anyway. Had I destroyed him in the blast?

Somehow, I didn't think I could destroy the ghost of time that easily. If anything, he'd have seen this coming. Then again, I existed, as I had heard the observers say, 'outside of time'. Which might mean he couldn't see my future, as I didn't have one. I pondered that interesting thought for a moment, but then dismissed it as unproductive. Vlad Masters had taken control of both the ghost zone and the real world. It was time somebody took on the pathetic wimp and start an empire of his own. And since I was the perfect candidate for it, naturally that should be me.

I hovered for a moment longer, relishing the sight of the destroyed lair if the time master and then took off, speeding through the ghost zone, faster and faster until I almost laughed. The power at my hands was intoxicating, and I could finally use it again. The years of being locked up in the thermos... no, the quarry... the despair and the panic and the pain of the whip were gone, never to come back. I was going to take Amity Park, Vlad, and the world.

But first, I was going to visit my mother.

* * *

The morning twilight crept over the desolate hills, chasing away the deep black of the night and turning everything into a shade of gray. Colors seemed to have no place here, red was just a form of gray and yellow, white. To be able to see the utter destruction ghosts could cause if they really put their mind to it made me feel both exhilarated and oddly sad. Literally nothing was standing, everything had turned to dust and stones. The hostile landscape seemed to stretch in every direction, and if I hadn't had a perfect view on where the ghost zone began – right behind me, where the gray sky morphed into green swirling – I probably would have gotten myself lost.

I passed the quarry in the distance, but didn't stop to take a look at it. I had no particular desire to view my fellow prisoners struggle to survive another day. They'd be there when I was done with Vlad, if I still had some appetite left then, I could always come for them.

I suppressed the sudden nausea and dismissed the feeling of disgust that welled up deep inside of me. The years inside the thermos had obviously messed with my mind and it seemed I needed to weed out these old sensitivities again. To take my mind off it, I sped up, flying into the general direction I knew my old town had to be, eager to have a look at the place where it all began, where I was created. The irony of my desire to return to that place wasn't lost on me, and I smiled a feral smile, briefly touching my fangs with my tongue just to check they were still there, until finally Amity Park came into view.

Of course, I should have known. And in fact, I had known, after all, George had told me, the lying idiot. There was a green glowing dome over part of the town, sizzling and humming, with eddies and currents flowing over its surface. Little sparks came of it where it touched the ground or some random destroyed building, and it made my skin crawl. There was no way even I could get through that, no way for any ghost to get through that. It had kept Vlad out these past years, and it would keep me out as well. Unless I destroyed it.

I knew I could do it. I had done it, remembered doing it, in that future so long ago, that future that had never come to pass and in fact was still some six years away. Time travel is an odd thing, a paradox, and the fact that I existed proved that. Best not to think too much about it. The only one who completely understood was Clockwork, and he was gone.

I felt a pang of regret. It surprised me, caught me off guard, but only for a moment. I pushed the strange, unfamiliar yet familiar feeling away and landed on the ground some thirty feet away from the bottom of the force field, close enough to make my hair stand up at the back of my neck, but far enough away to not be overly bothered by the slight push I felt from it, a push which I knew would get stronger and even painful if I got any closer.

A wail would do it. Just pull in some air, and then let it all out in a ghostly sonic shock wave. I knew that would destroy the shield, would tear it apart. I would be able to enter without any problem, but it would leave the town unprotected.

Again, the thought surprised me. Not the fact that it would indeed leave the town at the mercy of the ghosts, but that I would even think of it in that way. I hesitated. I could indeed destroy the shield, or, a little voice in my head said, I could simply turn human and walk through the shield.

I almost laughed. The thought was preposterous. As powerful as I was, as much as I could make myself appear human, mold myself into any person or being I cared to be, I was still a ghost. I could only appear human, not actually become one. I had closed off that particular path long ago when I killed my human half. I winced at the memory.

_Turn human._

The thought surfaced again. Impatiently, I shook my head. I was not going to turn human, not only because I had absolutely no desire to turn myself into something weak and dying, but also because it was completely and utterly impossible. I could not ever turn human again.

_Turn. Human_.

I reached. I searched, closed my eyes, looking for that warm spot, that tiny bright spark that would ignite, invoke a chain reaction that flipped my state of being into something that could almost be described as human and for all purposes could be viewed as human.

A feeling of extending myself washed over me, a warmth spread out, originating from my midsection, traveling over my body both up and down, The feeling was utterly familiar yet completely strange, because I _knew_ I wasn't human. Yet here I was, turning myself into actual flesh and bone, and the feeling was wonderful... for about two seconds.

Then I was on my hands and knees, hacking and coughing my lungs out while trying to keep my sanity because the pain in my chest was ripping me apart. I immediately wanted to turn ghost again, to end the pain, but then something strange happened. Somewhere, deep inside of me, a desperate feeling surfaced, a feeling of needing to stay this way, to wait for the paint to end, to... _remember_.

_The ruins of the nasty burger... the colorless sky... the overheating sauce... Voices, arguing, me yelling, my parents confused and angry and Sam and Tucker... Mr Lancer... and then the blast, and I couldn't reach them, I was running and running and failing and the utter despair was unbearable... _

_Cold black rock, draining me, robbing me of my essence of being, my half ghost status, and I knew I deserved it, knew I deserved something worse because I had become a monster, a failure, a freaky kid with freaky powers without the powers. A woman, fighting over a loaf of moldy bread, but I won and pushed her away in the mud, clutching the pathetic piece of bread close to my chest as to not give anybody else the chance to take it away from me..._

_George, talking..._

_Vlad, eying down at me and me looking up, the cold dead feeling and the hollowness of my being making every step pointless and agonizing._

_Darkness._

_Revenge._

The pain subsided to a manageable level. Slowly, the cold gray stone and dust I was laying on came into view. I blinked and moved my hand, then tried to push myself up. I didn't get far, just back on my hands and knees, head hanging. Taking slow, shallow breaths, I tried to take stock of the state of my body, starting with the fact that something red was dripping down between my hands, apparently coming from my mouth.

Not good.

I suppressed a cough, taking slow and measured breaths. Each breath was painful, but somehow I was used to that. It had been like that for hours, days, ever since the tunnel I had foolishly taking refuge in had collapsed on top of me. I remembered that clearly, even though the memory was blurred, overlapping with another memory, a memory of fighting my human half, of being slammed into a building by an unexpected ghostly wail he shouldn't have been able to produce, of being trapped inside a thermos and being driven over the edge of sanity...

I gulped. I could feel the tenuous control I had now, could feel how easy it would be to cross the line again, to let out my rage and simply destroy everything in sight just to get rid of the pain. And beside that, I could feel something else squirming inside of me, something even darker and hidden deep in the crevices of Dan's troubled mind. Something he, I, had always thought of being under control. It sent out a stream of hardly understood whispers and images, bombarding my inner senses with it, no longer filtered by Dan's near immunity to it. Or so he had thought.

I started. I shouldn't think of Dan, me, as 'him'. Clockwork had warned me about that, to not try and see myself and the other me as two separated beings, but rather two sides of the same being. I wasn't Danny or Dan, I was both. I had to integrate the two if I were to achieve my goal, and somehow isolate the Vlad part in me. But it was harder than I had imagined, and I had imagined it would be extremely hard.

Slowly, I pushed myself back up until I was sitting on my knees. Right in front of me the ghost shield, still glowing softly, rippling the air. I could see through it, could see the desolate landscape stretch on for a bit. Further away – I had to really strain my eyes to see it – structures, houses maybe.

I let out a strange sound, somewhere between a sob and a cough, and struggled to get on my feet. I was going to go in, I was going to find my mother, see her one last time before... well. Only Clockwork had really seen the future, and even he saw only possibilities. My ghostly side was immeasurably strong now, frighteningly powerful – I could feel the ectoplasm twist and turn beneath my skin, could feel the jumpy state of my being, wanting to flip back to my ghost form – but my human half was... weak. Damaged. Maybe beyond repair.

I suppressed a chuckle over my thinking about myself as something to be repaired, and took a staggering step forward towards the shield.

Immediately, I could feel the thing try to push me back, causing a stinging feeling. Another step, and the stinging became painful. Another, and I started wondering if a more-than-half-ghost could even pass the shield.

Another step. My skin started burning. Another. An involuntary gasp made me fall down on my knees again, one hand on the ground and one arm wrapped around my chest as if trying to keep myself together. I crawled.

Time slowed down, sped up, became endless and then slammed back into reality. A second became an hour, a heartbeat an eternity. My fingertips clawed the dirt on the ground, my nails tore, my hand started bleeding. Somehow, I kept going until I felt the shield cut into me, first my hands, then my head, my chest, my legs. I felt like having been run over by a train. Twice. But I made it. The more distance I put between myself and the shield, the easier the going got, until finally I managed to push myself up again, stand up and look back at it.

I had left a bloody trail on the ground. The ghost shield crackled and sizzled, and here, underneath the dome, I could already feel the beginning of the familiar headache ghost shields always used to cause me. I smiled at the memory. And with the memory came another, which made me frown.

I couldn't transform under a ghost shield. I was forced to stay in my human form for as long as I was here. But maybe that was a good thing. I didn't know what would happen should I change back into my ghost form, but the likelihood of Dan taking over was more than an academic possibility. I could almost feel him smirk at me.

Or maybe that was Vlad.

Shaking my head, I turned my back on the shield and faced the town, or what was left of it, which was preciously little. They had rebuilt it, George had said. Well, he had been partially right. A slight apologetic feeling rose up in me, and I shuddered at the thought that that was George, apologizing. George was dead, I had seen him die, I had killed him while looking him in the eyes. I was in no way better than Dan, and I knew it.

Which was why we had merged so easily.

I shook off that thought. Don't dwell on it too long, Clockwork had said, you don't have the time. Just take it as it is. This is you now, but remember who you were. It should be enough.

I certainly hoped so.


	16. Dream

**Chapter 15: Dream**

* * *

I was floating. It was the oddest sensation, really. There was warmth and softness all around me, clean air and, most important of all, hardly any pain. OK, maybe not hardly any, but certainly not at the level it had hurt before. My head was throbbing, my mouth was dry and my chest ached with each breath I took, but somehow the sharp edges had been taken off. It was almost bearable.

Slowly, I tried to move my hand. It brushed against the softness, feeling familiar cloth. It took me a while to identify it as sheets though, as I hadn't slept under sheets in a long time. In fact, most of the time down in the quarry I had been glad I had clothes. But now I was laying on some mattress, covered by sheets and, judging by the weight of it, a blanket. There was a stillness of the air that suggested being indoors...

_The tunnel was so dark I couldn't tell whether my eyes were open or closed. The earth had stopped rumbling though, the dust was settling down. I was breathing shallowly, quick, short breaths, trying to suppress my panic. I was inside the tunnel, thousands of tons of rock were above me, ready to crush me in an instant should the earth shake again. I could almost feel the walls closing in on me though the darkness. No, I _could_ feel them, they were closer, the space was getting smaller, they would close in on me and crush me..._

My breathing sped up, causing the pain in my chest to increase. Still, there was nothing I could do about it, nothing to stop the panic that was rising deep inside of me. I tried to get away from it, tried to claw my way out of... wherever I was, but I couldn't seem to move. My legs got entangled with the sheets and my left arm seemed to be attached to something that was tugging at my arm. I tore it loose, and noticed almost immediately the warm trickle of blood starting to flow from my arm.

I had pulled out some sort of needle.

I was in a hospital?

Finally, it occurred to me to open my eyes. A little scared – on a scale from one to ten, ten being the full blown panic, maybe a four – I tried to pry one eye open. It took several attempts to determine that yes, I could see something, no, it wasn't dark in the place where I was, and yes, I was in my old room.

Completely stunned, I stared at the huge poster of Saturn that hung on the wall. It had hung there since forever, since I had first gotten interested in astronomy and space travel, a lifetime ago. My lifetime ago. Looking at the poster, I felt strangely disconnected from it, as if I was looking at somebody else's past. A surprised laugh welled up in me, but before I could utter a sound, a thought occurred to me.

What if this was a dream? Worse, what if my enemies were playing tricks on me, making me think that I was safe, only to... what? Why would they do that? Wouldn't my enemies just kill me? No. They hadn't before...

A flash of anger went through me. What ever this was, whoever was playing tricks on me, it wasn't funny. I glared at the poster, trying to find focus for my anger, and finally wiggled my hand free from under the covers, raised it shakily and let out a short ecto blast. The poster disappeared in a flash, incinerated, instantly turned to ash. It rained down on the floor, tiny particles lighting up in the light of sun that was shining through the window, and I caught some of it in my mouth when it blew my way. I coughed painfully, and only then noticed the crack in the wall the poster had been covering up. A soft breeze actually blew through it, making the ash of the poster swirl, dance in the strangely greenish sun beam.

I turned my head to look at the window, but my eyes didn't get there. Instead, they fell on a crumbled, frizzled figure sleeping in a comfortable chair next to my bed. Her brown hair had gray streaks in it, the wrinkles on her face spoke of years of strain and worry, but I recognized her instantly.

Another echo from the past, another trick of my mind that so desperately wanted to see her, or the real thing? I reached out with my hand that had been laying on top of the covers, and tried to touch her. She was too far away though, and just when I was about to push myself up to get to her and see if she was real before blasting away that painful memory too, she opened her eyes and looked straight at me.

If this was a dream, I wasn't sure I wanted it to end.

"Mom?" I asked, only it came out as a pathetic rasp. She seemed to understand me anyway, because she unwrapped herself from the chair and bent forward. Her mouth curved up into a strained smile, and I could tell from the lines on her face she didn't smile a lot. She placed her hand on mine, and her warmth sent a shock through my arm.

"You're real," I whispered.

She nodded, and I was just about to wonder why she didn't speak when I saw the tears in her eyes.

"Yes," she said hoarsely, finding her voice, "I'm real. And so are you."

I sank back into my soft pillow, letting myself relax for the first time in three years and savoring the lingering tingling feeling her touch had left on my arm. I was safe. Everything would be alright now, I no longer had to fight for my life, no longer had to worry if I would make it through the day and no longer had to endure the torment of the thermos... I groaned at that last memory, because somehow it seemed stronger than the others. To hold on to myself, or what I perceived to be myself, namely the quarry-version, not the evil-destructive-twenty-four-year-old version, I looked at my mother again, who by now had discovered my bloody left arm. Her face contorted in worry.

"What happened?" she asked, her voice stronger now, "What did you do?"

I winced, my mind immediately starting a list of the things I'd done the past few years and the past, present and future decade that never was but was also a part of me, but she got up, grabbed some bandages and started wrapping it around my arm. I watched her, drinking in her presence and her aura because I had watched her die and the fact that she was alive sent the Dan part of me reeling.

"There," she said, sitting back down again.

We stared at each other, each of us apparently unable to come up with anything to say, or maybe we both had so much to say we didn't know where to begin.

"We found you just inside our shield," she said.

I blinked, thinking back at my struggle to get through the shield. It already seemed a distant memory.

"You're... badly hurt."

I wanted to shrug, but remembered at the last moment that shrugging was probably painful.

"We... I didn't recognize you at first." She sounded apologetic. "We have a clinic, sort of, not a real hospital, and we were just bringing you there when I realized... when I saw..." She stopped for a moment, as if trying to keep herself from crying. "You opened your eyes and they were _your_ eyes and I realized the impossible had happened and you had managed to survive..."

Her voice trailed away. I didn't remember waking up after I had obviously fainted, in fact, I didn't remember fainting. The last thing I remembered was trying to get to my feet after pushing myself through the shield.

"How did you escape?"

Ah, the big question. How did I? Was there a way to twist that particular story in such a way that it didn't make me look like the evil ghost I was?

"Did you..." Hesitation. "Did you use your... powers?"

My eyes widened. Fear suddenly stuck up its ugly head again. I flinched and tried to move away from her. She grabbed my hand and I stopped struggling. Her touch was soothing, relaxing, nurturing.

"Yes, Danny, I know about you being a... half ghost. Tucker told me after... after everything was over and we had lost... you."

"Tucker is alive?" I rasped, and then looked at her pleadingly, "Can I have some water?"

That question brought some reprieve, as she busied herself with getting me a glass of clear, cold water. It gave me time to think about the story I had to make up, because there was no way I would reveal my true nature to her. I needed her, and to have that look of utter disgust on her face, the way she had looked at me just before the Nasty Burger blew up in that alternate time line that still made my head spin when thinking about it – I remembered things that never happened and would never happen – and I never wanted to see that look on her face again.

"You know about Danny Phantom?" I asked, after gulping down about half of the water.

She nodded. "Tucker... explained," she said, "How you were afraid to tell us because of the way we hated all ghosts." She shook her head, looking slightly helpless. "I'm so sorry, Danny. That was my biggest regret, these past years, that I wasn't able to help you, be there for you when you needed me, and instead I made you afraid of me... and we fought you and tried to capture you." She looked down for a moment. "I'm sorry that you couldn't trust us."

I shook my head. "No," I said, "_I'm _sorry. I should have told you guys right at the beginning, but I wasn't supposed to be in the lab at all at the time and... well... I thought it'd all blow over, that the... _effect..._ would disappear by itself."

I sighed, immediately regretting it as my ribs shifted painfully. "Anyway, it's all water under the bridge now."

I took another sip of water and then idly looked around to put the glass down. My mother took it from my slightly unsteady hand, and I leaned back in my pillow, shifting a bit to get comfortable. Of course, there is no real way to be comfortable with at few broken ribs. Then I shivered, because a gust of wind blew through the crack in the wall I had revealed by destroying the poster.

"How..." She stopped, obviously trying to ask me about myself but not quite knowing how to. I waited, looking at her tiredly.

"How have you been, Danny?"

My brain shut down immediately. I did _not_ want to tell her. Not only because the story itself was confusing – I had been locked inside a thermos, going mad, I had spent my days digging into the strange black rock – but also because I didn't know which one was true. I was Danny and I was Dan... more Danny than Dan? Was there really a difference? Or was I neither?

"OK, I guess," I said, knowing she'd see the lie for what it was.

"What happened, how did you get hurt? How did you get out?"

I shook my head. Thinking was hard, somehow. I stared up at the ceiling, noticing the cracks and stains in it. For a moment, they went out of focus.

"I had help," I finally said.

Sure I had help. George had helped me, had donated himself as a source of energy, and no matter how much he had insisted I take his life force, there was no way he could have known just exactly what he had been offering. And then I'd helped my other part out of the thermos, the part that only wanted to destroy things and inflict pain on others to lessen my own pain, and I had merged myself with him... me. He had merged with me. I had merged with him. I felt nauseous.

"You're tired," my mother said, "Why don't you try and sleep some more?"

The room seemed to go fuzzy and I suddenly did feel very tired. Bleary eyed, I tried to focus on my mother once again, and now noticed the faint blueish glow she seemed to be giving off. Just like George.

"What did you give me?" I muttered, already letting go of reality. The bed seemed to swallow me up as I sank back deeper. My hand fell down on the covers. The door opened.

Before I knew it, I was out of the bed, staggering and shivering. The dark skinned boy who had stuck his head around the door froze. I was wide awake again, although the room was spinning around me and the floor was moving oddly beneath my feet. The glass of water with the sedative, that had somehow ended up on my nightstand, shattered on the floor.

"Danny! You're awake!"

Before I could collapse, both Tucker and my mother caught me and gently helped me lay down again. Eyes wide open, I stared up at the two familiar faces swimming in and out of my vision.

"He needs to rest," my mother's voice echoed from far away.

"No," I muttered, but they didn't seem to hear me.

They continued talking, but I could no longer make out what they were saying, other than that Tucker seemed to have expanded his vocabulary in a technological direction. I was floating, drifting in and out of consciousness, but never quite sleeping. I couldn't sleep, didn't want to sleep, I wanted to know what was going on and I wanted to continue looking at my mother and my best friend who I had thought was dead too, just like everybody else. Eventually, they noticed my struggle to stay awake.

"Danny, why don't you try and get some sleep, you need to rest, you need to get better..."

"No," I mumbled, "Need to..."

I flailed my arm around randomly, grabbing the first thing I hit. An arm. I pulled whoever I had caught closer and stared up at the dark face.

"Tucker," I said, "Talk to me. Don't let me sleep."

I needed them, needed them keep me sane. I didn't want to sleep through my brief time with them, I wanted to capture their faces, savor every moment. Time was running preciously short, I could feel it, the ticking of the clocks, slightly out of sync, driving me mad... With some effort, I controlled my breathing, pushing down my hatred for Clockwork.

"C'mon Tuck," I slurred, trying to focus on his face, "You used to talk all the time..."

The dark blur shook his head, but I thought I detected a smile on his face. He looked up, presumably at my mother who was close by but out of sight, and then gently pried my hand loose from his arm. I had thought I had him in a death grip, but he had no trouble doing that, so that probably meant I was weaker than I thought.

"OK," he said, sitting down. I heard my mother move away, and a moment later the door squeaked, signifying that she had left.

"She's gonna get you some soup," Tucker said, "If you're going to be stubborn about this, you might just as well try and eat something." He looked worried. "Doesn't look like you've had a lot to eat lately."

I didn't answer that, and he started talking about anything and everything, explaining the ghost shield, how they survived, sending out raiding parties further and further away from the town to collect canned foods, how they were using the park to grow their own food, how miserable they were at it because nobody had much of a clue about what they were doing, how they struggled to keep the generators going so the ghost shield would stay up...

His voice, deeper than I remembered, filled the room. I listened to him, barely hearing what he was saying, just taking in his presence, and the contentment that flooded over me was only marred by the fact that I knew it wouldn't last. At some point, my mother returned with soup, and she fed it to me after my own try with the spoon resulted in a lot of soup in my bed and very little in my mouth.

It was the most wonderful thing I had ever tasted. We talked – or rather, they talked and I made all the necessary noises to let them know I was listening – for quite a while longer, until my eyes started dropping all by themselves and I simply lost contact with the world.


	17. Back from the Dead

**Chapter 16: Back from the Dead**

* * *

"Nobody knows about you but me, Tucker and Valerie," my mother said.

I shifted nervously, tugging at the unfamiliar cloth of the clean shirt I was wearing. My own shirt, left behind in my room three years ago, now falling loosely over my thin frame. I had caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, and that was quite enough. I looked like death. Fallen in cheek, sunken in eyes, pathetically thin arms, ribs sticking out. I was constantly out of breath; the doctor from the clinic had told me I might regain some of my lung function, but he didn't have the proper operating capacity to make that happen. At least I had stopped coughing up blood.

"We didn't want you in the clinic," she continued, seemingly unaware of my wobbly position on the edge of the bed, legs dangling down, my hands clawing in the fabric of the sheets to keep myself upright. Seemed that I had been holding myself up, running on empty these past few days – weeks? years? – and now that I could finally rest a little, there was no way I could get up again. But I had to.

"Because if they examined your blood... I'm not sure what they'd find. What they'd do if they found out you're a... half ghost."

Dr Turner had examined me several times during the past few days, making me sit up and breathe – painful – while listening to my lungs. He had made several remarks from which I had concluded he found my mother keeping me home suspicious, but didn't want to challenge her authority. Which was fine by me. I was quite comfortable where I was, and even though my former healing powers didn't seem to be in top condition, I was still doing better than what was to be expected from somebody who foolishly stabbed himself with his own rib.

Meaning I wasn't dead.

During my stay in my room I had mostly slept. When I didn't sleep, my mother or Tucker would talk to me, trying to get me to talk about myself, but so far I had managed to deflect all of their questions. Usually by feigning fatigue, which always immediately tuned up the worry they had for me. I felt slightly guilty about that, but it seemed to be the only way to stay quiet.

"Tucker told her, after we thought you were... dead."

She was talking about Valerie now. I frowned at that. I still didn't like the idea that she knew what I was... or thought she knew what I was, not knowing that her first instinct about me had been right. Tucker said she had forgiven me, but had she? And should she have?

Fact remained that they didn't know what they were dealing with. _I_ didn't know what I was dealing with. But they were looking at me as if they still thought I was Danny Phantom, local hero, when in fact I hadn't been him in a long time. I was just keeping up the act, and even though I knew I was living a lie, it felt nice.

A nice, comfortable lie.

I looked up at my mother, who was looking at me expectantly, and then slowly placed my feet on the ground. After a moment of consideration – how painful would it be if I collapsed? – I placed my weight on them and pushed myself up and away from the bed. My mother grabbed my arm and steadied me.

"Thanks," I muttered.

Sweat broke out, but I was determined to do this. Frowning in concentration, I deliberately let go of my mother and took the two steps towards the chair standing by my desk. I grabbed the back of the chair and grinned triumphantly. A small step for man... yadda yadda. Slowly, I turned around and eyed my bed, which looked particularly attractive at that moment. With a soft click, the door opened.

I was expecting it, but still, like every time somebody entered my room or made a sudden move, I flinched. My eyes shot nervously through the room, again checking the window – closed, but not locked –, the crack in the wall which I had refused to cover up again, and then finally the door. My mother had observed me, used to my anxiety by now but clearly not liking it.

Valerie stepped into the room.

She took my breath away. This was how I remembered her, not the fifteen year old high school student, but the twenty-four year old version, fighting for her life in the ruins of Amity Park. The Dan side of me made to smirk at her, but I managed to keep it inside.

Her hair was short, her body curvy, and she was clad in the red skin-tight outfit of the Red Huntress. She was eighteen years old, like me, same height as me – I would have been taller if it weren't for the three years of severe malnutrition – and carried herself with a confidence I lacked. Well, the Danny side of me lacked.

"Hey Val," I said.

She took her time, carefully shutting the door behind her and then looking me over, examining me. She took in the death grip I had on the back of the chair, the way I was slightly bent over because standing up straight hurt, the way my eyes burned too brightly in my pale face.

"Well," she finally said, "You look OK... for a dead guy."

Ignoring her comment, I took a chance and released one hand from the back of the chair. I waved generously at her.

"Take a seat," I said, as if I'd been holding the chair for her.

She stepped closer, eying me suspiciously, and then sat down on the chair. I took two precarious steps and sat down on my bed again, trying to look as if that particular feat didn't use up all the energy I had left.

"So," I said, "How have you been?"

She shrugged. Her eyes scanned the room, rested on the crack in the wall opposite my bed for a moment, and then at the support beam that was holding up the roof. She folded her hands in her lap, in an obvious effort to appear relaxed.

"OK, I guess," she said, "Just came back from a raiding mission... we managed to secure fuel for our generators, should last us at least a month."

The generators that kept the ghost shield going. The generators that failed on a regular basis.

"So, how have _you_ been?" she asked.

I remained silent. Saying I was OK was the first thing that came to mind, but there was no point in saying it as she could see with her own eyes I wasn't.

"I'm alive," I said, and then amended, "Sort of."

That last comment actually brought a small smile to her face. She moved her hands, but kept them in her lap. The smile faded.

"I managed to get close to the quarry once," she said, "I saw..."

"Don't," I said, shooting a furtive glance at my mother, who looked interested and slightly worried.

"They were whipping a man," she continued, disregarding my comment. She wasn't looking at me anymore, but at my mother. "He... was on the ground. In the end, he didn't move and... I think..."

"He was probably dead," I said harshly.

Suddenly, I was angry. I wanted to get up and pace, and blurt it all out like I had blurted the whole story out to George in the tunnel. I wanted to hurt them, show them my reality, make them understand what it had been like, what I had had to do to stay alive.

"People were dying every day," I said, "They collected them once a week." I tried to relax my clenched fists. "You don't aggravate the guards, you try to stay unnoticed, but you have to eat. If you're not close to the road, you miss out on a meal. Missing out on a meal is another step towards death."

My mother's face had gone ashen, and Valerie too looked pale under her dark skin. I wondered if it was the tale I was telling, or if there was something in my expression that put them off. I probably needed to shut up.

"Only the strong survive," my mother said.

I shook my head. "No."

Go on, I thought, ask. Ask me what I meant by that, ask me about the fights that inevitably broke out, always trying to push fellow prisoners away, trying to get on top, trying to collect the most food. Ask me about how we watched each other, kept track on who had the warmest clothes, the best shoes.

"How did you escape," Valerie asked.

My anger was gone as quickly as it had come. I deflated, my shoulders slumped, and I tried to breathe in such a way that it didn't hurt too much. My mood swings confused me, exhausted me. As Dan, I had been angry all the time, bent on singlemindedly destroying everything in sight, causing as much pain and suffering as I could to somehow lessen my own. And as Danny, I had simply buried myself, literally, in the quarry, so I would no longer feel. All in all, Dan had a point.

"I didn't," I said.

* * *

The street was deserted. The twilight made the shadows deep and dark, and I looked at the ragged outlines of the damaged houses. Some had collapsed completely, some seemed miraculously undamaged. The street itself was clear of the rubble that had prevented rescue workers from getting to us three years ago. There were no cars – all the fuel they could find went to the generators.

Three thousand people lived under the shield. A mere three thousand, survivors of the attack three years ago. Only a fraction of the people that used to live in Amity Park. And nobody knew what had happened to the rest of the world, although Valerie had told me that further away from the border, as they called the huge tear in reality that connected the ghost zone to the real world, damage wasn't as extensive, and there were people living there, not under the protection of a ghost shield, in constant fear of being captured by ghosts. Very few refugees came to Amity Park though. It was simply too close to the border. People generally ran away from it.

The shield itself caused a perpetual greenish light. The sun was a bright green orb in the sky, the moon looked more than a little ominous. Even at night, you could see it, sparkling and sizzling. And humming.

Other people didn't seem to notice, but I did. I suspected it was something ghostly, and hesitated to mention it to my mother, even though she knew what I was.

She had asked me about my half ghost status a few times, tentatively, as if she wasn't sure I wanted to talk about it. In fact, I was more than happy to tell her anything, and I did, because it prevented me talking about the past three years. And all that time, I was in my room, mostly resting, sometimes moving around, picking up things like books and CDs and little model space shuttles and examining them. I remembered carefully constructing the models, I remembered the dreams I'd had, but I didn't feel connected to the boy I used to be any longer. I was so far away from him he might just as well have been a different person altogether. Of course, my mother still saw me as I used to be, and I didn't do anything to make her think otherwise.

She wasn't with me all the time of course. Frequently, she was downstairs, and I could hear her moving around, working on improving the ghost shield or ghost weapons, talking to people who came by frequently, sometimes having loud discussions. I stayed away from all that, kept myself aloof. I just hung around in my room, happy just to sit there or lay there, stare at the ceiling and not be afraid any longer.

Of course, having to constantly remind yourself you don't have to be afraid is kind of tiring. And the clock that was ticking in my subconscious just kept getting more insistent that I move, that I do something, that I was running out of time. I just didn't know why.

The noise downstairs had subsided. I tuned my ears to the quiet of the house and listened, knowing my mother would be coming up the stairs soon. If I really concentrated, I could feel her, her warmth, her heartbeat, the bluish glow she emitted... Anticipation rose. My hands on the windowsill, my back to the window, I stood, watching the door. My breathing was still shallow, but not as raspy as it had been before, and there was actually some color on my cheek now, the dark shadows under my eyes had disappeared in the short week that I had been here. Life had literally returned to me. And it had taken me a few days to figure it out.

I leached on her energy.

The door opened and she entered the room, carrying a tray. I didn't quite see her though, as I had consciously been opening myself up her. A bright blue glow entered. It startled me. I had never seen her like this, and though the Dan part of me immediately started listing the possibilities, the Danny part of me reeled in shock. This wasn't me. I had to stop this, had to close myself off again, this was just plain... wrong.

Then why did it feel so right?

The blue glow closed in on me and I sighed, breathing it in, touching it. I wanted to take it all in, wanted to consume her, add to my strength until I was crackling with energy and little sparks would spring between my finders and my hair would stand up, maybe even start flaming again... and her face would shrivel, her hands would wither, and I would look her in the eyes until they broke, I would revel of the terror in them, the realization that I had killed her...

...I had killed George that way...

I gasped and tore myself loose. I was on my knees, coughing, hacking, eyes tearing. Vaguely, I heard my mother cry out, felt her hands on my shoulders from a great distance, and then more hands, dark skinned hands, pulling me up. The room moved around me, colors swirled and flashed before my eyes, and then I was on my back, staring up at the ceiling. The cracks and stains slowly came into focus.

"Danny?"

I turned my head and flinched when I saw my mother's worried face. The lines around her eyes and mouth had deepened, and she looked very, very tired. Only then I noticed the light in the room had changed, there was now a candle burning on my desk, and the window I had been standing at earlier was completely black.

"Yeah?" I asked.

She took a shuddering breath, but didn't say anything. I didn't either. I didn't want to explain myself, in fact, I couldn't explain myself, not now, not ever. What I had done, what I had been about to do, that atrocity of a magnitude so great I had no means do describe it... How had I thought there would be redemption? Why was I here, comfortable, with my only remaining family member, when others were out there, in pain, alone, dying?

Time was running out.

* * *

"I'm..." I stopped and helplessly waved my hand, then let it fall back in my lap. I was sitting on the edge of my bed again, legs dangling down, feeling only slightly dizzy this time.

"I'm a ghost."

Tucker shook his head. "Ghosts can't get through the ghost shield," he said confidently.

I shrugged. "So I'm not completely a ghost. I'm just mostly a ghost. The ghost shield... let's say getting through wasn't easy." Painful, more like it. "I'm not a half ghost, Tucker. It must be at least three quarter... if not more. I'm not what you think I am."

"You're Danny," Tucker said.

He got up, walked to the window and peered outside. A pale light shone through the window and lit up his face.

I shook my head. "No. I'm not."

"You used to be."

I nodded. "Yes."

He sighed. "What are you trying to tell me, Danny?"

"I'm not sure."

He turned around and leaned on the windowsill, much like I had the night before, when my mother had entered and I had almost... I tried again. "I'm not sure I want to tell you."

"Oh, come on, Danny." Impatience. He stalked back to my desk and let himself drop on the rickety desk chair. It squeaked. "We used to share everything, the three of us. No secrets, remember?"

"There's no three of us."

Tucker winced and then looked contrite. "You're right. I'm sorry, Danny..."

"I watched her die."

The pain was still there, even though I had been denying it for the past few years. The pain of her broken eyes, staring up at the sky, unseeing... overlaying the memory of her being blown to pieces when the nasty burger sauce exploded. I got to watch her die in two different ways at the same time every time I thought of her. Same went for Jazz. Joy.

Tucker didn't look at me. "I know."

He was being way to serious. This wasn't the Tucker I knew. Tucker was a happy go lucky, goofy guy who'd try to charm every girl he met. The frown on his face was totally misplaced. I wanted the old Tucker back.

"Hey," I said, "Can we just..." I waved my hand, unsure of what I wanted to say, but somehow wanting to convey my desire to pretend, for a little while, that everything was normal. He seemed to get what I was trying to say.

"You want to go outside? Let me show you around?"

I considered it. That was not what I had in mind, but it might be a good idea to have a look at the town, to see what shape it was in. Of course, that would mean leaving my sanctuary, this room. I looked at the door.

"You mean, go outside?"

Tucker laughed a little. "If you have any other way to look around town, I'd love to hear it."

I looked down at my feet. "Don't have shoes," I mumbled.

Tucker frowned. "Sure you do." He yanked the doors of my wardrobe open and started rummaging in one of the bottom shelves. "Here you go."

Red and white sneakers. Old and worn. But better than I had worn in years. These would be worth somebody's life back in the quarry. Only the strong survive... right. Make that, only the merciless survive. I took the shoes from Tucker's hands and slowly put them on, ignoring the slightly confused look on my friends face at my sudden bleak expression. When I was done, I carefully placed my feet on the floor and stood. The room swayed only a little. I was good to go.

Well, physically.

Tucker, having already walked up to the door, turned around and looked at me expectantly. I just stood there, staring at the door opening that suddenly seemed ominous. My feet didn't move. I looked at Tucker, and to my dismay saw both understanding and pity in his eyes. It angered me.

Clenching my jaw, I took a step, ignoring the desperate feeling of wanting to crawl into my bed again and hide under the covers. And once that first step was under way, the next one seemed easier, and before I knew it I was standing next to my friend at the top of the stairs, looking down at what used to be our living room, but was now turned into some sort of war room.

A huge table was standing in the middle, covered with papers, maps and empty coffee mugs. Rulers, some devices I suspected to be portable ghost detectors, some belts that I was sure of were specter deflectors. The door to the kitchen was open, and I could just make out the kitchen table, covered with even more equipment. I gripped the banister tightly, wondering how safe it would be for me to be downstairs.

"Come on," Tucker said, descending down the stairs a few steps and then turning around, "All this stuff is turned off. It won't hurt you."

I didn't move for a few seconds, but then followed him down into the living room. Tucker didn't stop there though, but moved straight to the kitchen where my mother was. I couldn't see her. I felt her. There was somebody with them.

"Hi Tucker," my mother said, "Did you... _Danny_!"

I leaned casually against the door frame, not because I was feeling particularly casual but because it kept me upright. My mother was at the counter, cooking something I hoped had nothing to do with any of the jars containing green glowing globs on the shelf next to the refrigerator. At the table, Damian Gray, slowly and painstakingly examining a piece of equipment with wires sticking out. It looked awkward, what he was doing. But I guess doing anything with only one arm would look awkward. His right eye was covered by an eye patch.

"Hi mom," I said, "Hi Mr Gray."

Mr Gray gave me a long and hard stare, but finally a smile broke on his face. "Danny. Back from the dead. You look... well."

"No I don't."

He smiled at that. I wondered if Valerie had told him what I was. Hesitantly, I smiled back, trying to ignore the observation that he glowed greenish, instead of my mother's blue glow. I looked away and on impulse checked Tucker. He too seemed to greenish, but leaning towards blue. Interesting. I wondered if there would be different tastes – yes, my subconscious said, there are, just try...

I shook my head. Now was not the time. Not only would they notice, but also because it was wrong. I pondered those two thoughts for a moment, but then decided to let it rest, as there was no added value in me analyzing where those thoughts came from. To further rid myself of any temptation, I pushed the whole notion of people and their energies as far away as possible. The glow disappeared, the people remained.

People who were looking at me oddly.

"Um," I said, "What?"

"I asked if you would like some soup," my mother said.

"Oh." I looked idly at the pan on the stove, and then at the spoon my mother was holding. No green glow there. Maybe it was alright. "OK."

Two big steps brought me to the table, and I quickly sat down on one of the chairs. A bowl of soup was brought over moments later, and I dug in, realizing only then that I was hungry. In fact, now that I was eating, sitting properly at a table, I realized I hadn't felt this good in ages. The pain was entirely manageable, I wasn't on the verge of fainting because I was upright, and I was actually _hungry_. Smiling, I pushed the empty bowl towards my mother, who had been watching me eat with a strange expression on her face, a mixture of pride and worry, and she got my meaning, because she picked it up and refilled it. And all this time, the kitchen had been silent.

"So," Tucker said, "Feeling any better?"

I nodded and grinned. I could take on the world.

I would take on the world.

* * *

"Clockwork?"

I nodded. Tucker looked pensive. He was sitting on the grass on top of the hill in the park. We were looking down on what once were fields around the pond, now turned into a greenery. People were working the grounds, harvesting, weeding, watering. Everything by hand. It looked odd, these cultivated fields in the middle of the town, surrounded by ruins of high rises.

"What did he say?"

I shrugged. "The usual crap. Paths and possibilities, and why he couldn't save us."

I was sitting next to him, hugging my legs, resting my chin on my knees. I was tired. The short walk from my house to the park had all but exhausted me, and the sight of the town hadn't helped. Sure, they had rebuilt some of it, but for the most part it was still in ruins. The school was one big black mess. Nobody had tried to rebuilt it. Tucker had explained something about an old elementary school that was in use for smaller children, but really the older children were just helping out their parents in simply getting through the next day. This was no way to live.

"Didn't he have, like, all those monitors, where you could see what happened in the future?" Tucker asked, "Did he show you any of it? Do you know what'll happen?"

I shook my head. "He said..." I stopped and frowned, trying to recall the conversation. "He said he created the most favorable circumstances. Which means we have a chance. We can win this. I just... have to..."

My voice trailed away. Tucker let himself fall backwards, folded his hands behind his head and stared up at the faintly glowing ghost shield above our heads. The thing still made my hair stand up, even from this distance, but I could ignore that minor discomfort.

"I have to make the right decision," I muttered.

"Why?" Tucker asked, "What do you mean? How can you do something, you're..."

"Weak?" I laughed. It hurt.

Tucker turned his head to look at me. I glanced at him, but then looked away again.

"Tucker, I'm the most powerful ghost that ever... didn't exist. I'm... not Danny. Not completely. Clockwork, he gave me... made me... no, I did this myself. I'm not what you think I am, Tucker."

I was looking away, but a hand on my shoulder forced me to turn around and face him.

"What are you saying, Danny?"

The lines on his face were too pronounced, his green eyes too tired, too serious. There was pain there, pain for the loss of his parents, his friends. Weariness from years of hard work, burying himself in ghost technology, taking on responsibilities no teenager should. I was going to end this.

"I'm saying you should leave this to me."

I got up and walked away a few paces.

"Coming?"

I heard him get up and walk up to me. He stopped right behind me, and the both of us just stood there for a while, looking down of what was left of our town. The bond was there again, for a short moment I could just about imagine Sam standing next to him, and the three of us being invincible. Now, there was just two of us. We were still invincible.

"Then what are you?" Tucker asked.

Interesting question. Not many people will be able to answer that one, and they don't even have the complication of not being human. I had no reference other than Vlad – not much of a role model – and my weak 'cousin' Danielle, MIA. All I had to go on were my own thoughts and actions, and they weren't exactly comforting.

"I am a weapon."

The truth of that statement hung between us, and it was very likely Tucker would have argued with me on that. I think he even opened his mouth to do so, because I could feel the annoyance and confusion coming from him, but everything he was going to say was forever lost. As we were standing there, on the hill, the green dome above our head flickered, lit up brightly, and then died.

"Crap," Tucker said.


End file.
